
3* 




Glass. 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 




PRINCE HENRY OF PORTUGAL. 

{From an Engraving of the Miniature in the MS. of " The Discovery of 
Guinea" 1448.) 



fll|j ^lorg of the Rations 



THE 



STORY OF PORTUGAL 




ITMORSE STEPHENS 

BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER 
AUTHOR OF "A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION" 



LC Control Number 





tmp96 025705 






NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 






Copyright, 1891 

BY 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

Entered at Stationers' Hall y London 

By T. Fisher Unwin 



Press of 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York 



PREFACE. 



Tms volume is written on a different plan to that 
adopted in most of the volumes in the same Series 
which have preceded it, and attempts to give a short 
chronological history of Portugal. An episodical 
history, though more interesting than a consecutive 
narrative, in that it treats only of the most striking 
events, demands from the reader a groundwork of 
accurate knowledge. This is not given with regard 
to the history of Portugal in any book in the English 
language with which the author is acquainted. Dun- 
ham, who combined a history of Portugal with that 
of Spain, in five volumes published in Lardner's 
Cabinet Cyclopedia between 1838 and 1843, based his 
account on Vertot's Revolutions ' de Portugal, first 
printed at Paris in 1678, and modern English standard 
books of reference still make use of Dunham, and 
contain the old blunders of identifying Portugal with 
Lusitania, recognizing the fictitious Cortes of Lamego 
in 1 143, regarding the victory of Ourique as a " pro- 
digious " victory, &c, &c. Since the time of Dunham, 
a few books have been published in England bearing 



VI 11 PREFACE. 

on special periods of Portuguese history, such as the 
lives of the Marquis of Pombal and the Duke of 
Saldanha, published by John Smith, Count of Car- 
nota, and two volumes of a History of Portugal, by E. 
MacMurdo, and which is still in progress ; but there 
exists no book containing a complete and trustworthy 
history to which students may be referred. 

Yet within the last fifty years the history of Portu- 
gal has been entirely rewritten. The modern school 
of historians, which derived its first impulsion from 
Niebuhr and Ranke, found a brilliant representative 
in Alexandra Herculano, who saw that history could 
only be written after a careful examination of con- 
temporary documents, and who in his Historia de 
Portugal, published between 1848 and 1853, swept 
away much of the cobweb of legend which had 
enveloped the early history of his country. Hercu- 
lano undoubtedly owed much to Heinrich Schafer, 
who wrote the history of Portugal in the Geschichte der 
Europdischen Staaten edited by Heeren and Ukert ; but 
he went much further than Schafer, and the history 
of the latter is now quite out of date. The works of 
Herculano and his followers have quite superseded the 
histories of Lemos, Sousa Monteiro, and J. F. Pereira, 
which are mentioned here only as books to be avoided 
by the historical student. 

It is not intended to give a complete bibliography 
of the works of the modern Portuguese school of his- 
torians, but the author thinks it worth while to refer 
to some of the books which he has used, and which 
can be recommended as trustworthy guides to those 
who may wish to examine further into the history of 



PREFACE. IX 

Portugal. First with regard to documents, the Col- 
leccdo de Livros ineditos de His tor ia Portugueza, 
edited by Correa da Serra, and the Colleccdo dos prin- 
cipaes Auctores da Historia Portugueza, and the Portu- 
gallice Monumenta Historica, edited by v Herculano, 
contain the best editions of the old chroniclers ; while 
perpetual reference must be made to the Quadro ele- 
mentar das Relacoes politicas e diplomaticas de Portugal 
of the Viscount oPSantarem, which was continued by 
Rebello da Silva as the ^Corpo diplomatico Portuguez, 
and contains in thirty-six volumes, published between 
1856 and 1878, the "fcedera " of Portugal up to 1640, 
and to the Colleccdo dos A ctos publico s celebrados entre 
a Coroa de Portugal e as mais Potencias desde 1 640 ate 
Presente, edited by J. Ferreira Borges de Castro and 
J. Judice Biker. As consecutive narratives, the short 
history of J. P. Oliveira Martins, and the illustrated 
popular history, which is the joint work of Antonio 
Ennes, B. Ribeiro, E. Vidal, G. Lobato, L. Cordeiro 
and Pinheiro Chagas may be read ; but it would be 
far better to study the more scientific works of Alex- 
ander Herculano, Historia de Porttigal, 4 vols., 1848- 
53, which goes to 1279, and ^Da Origem e Estabeleci- 
mento da Inquisicdo em Portugal, 2 vols., 1854-57 > the 
y Historia de Portugal pendente XVI e XVII. Seculos, 
5 vols., 1860-71, by L. A. Rebello da Silva ; Historia 
de Portugal desde os Fins do XVII Seculo ate 18 14, 
1874, by J. M. Latino Coelho ; and Historia da Guerra 
civil e do Estabelecimento do Governo Parlamentar em 
Portugal, 6 vols., 1 866-1 881, by S. J. da'Luz Soriano. 
Among special books of interest in different languages 
may be noted Memorias para a Historia e TJieoria das 



X PREFACE. 

Cortes, by the Viscount of Santarem, 1828 ; Las Rain- 
has de Portugal^ by F. da Fonseca Benevides, 1878 ; 
History of the Revolutions of Portugal from the Founda- 
tion of that Kingdom to the year \6jj,with the Letters 
of Sir R. Southwell during his Embassy there to the 
Duke of Ormond, by R. Carte, 1740 ; Les Faux Don 
Sebastien, by Miguel Martins d' Antas, Paris, 1 866 ; Le 
Chevalier de fant ; Relations de la France avec le Por- 
tugal au temps de Mazarin, by Jules Tessier, Paris, 1877 ; 
and Life of Prince Henry the Navigator \ by R. H. 
Major, 1868. Coming to the history of the present cen- 
tury, the great History of the Peninsular War, by Gen. 
Sir W. F. P. Napier, is justly famous in all countries, 
and it is so well known that only a very few pages have 
been devoted to the subject in the present volume ; 
but reference has also been made to the Historia 
geralda Lnvasdo dos Francezes em Portugal, by Accursio 
das Neves ; ,to the Excerptos Historicos relativos a 
Guerra denominada da Peninsula, e as anter lores de 
1 80 1, de Roussillon e Cataluna, by CI audio de Chaby ; 
and to the Wellington Despatches. On the history of 
the civil wars the best authorities are Memorias para 
a Historia do Tempo que duron a Usiupacao de Dom 
Miguel, by J. L. Freire de Carvalho, 1841-43 ; His- 
toria de Liberdade em Portugal, by J. G. de Barros e 
Cunha, 1869 ; DespacJios e Correspondencia do Duque 
de Palmella, 1851-54; Correspondencia Official de Conde 
de Carneira com o Duque de Palmella, 1 874 ; Memoirs 
of the Duke of Saldanha, by the Count of Carnota ; The 
Wars of Succession in France and Portugal, by William 
Bollaert, vol. i., 1870, and The Civil War in Portugal 
and the Siege of Oporto, by a British Officer of Hussars 



PREFACE. XI 

[Colonel Badcock], 1835. Much valuable historical 
material is also buried in magazines and the transac- 
tions of learned societies, and special reference may 
be made to two particularly interesting essays in the 
Annaes des Sciencias Moraes e Politicas, Dom Joao II 
e a Nobreza, by Rebello da Silva, and Apontamentos 
para a Historia da Conqnista de Portugal por Filippe 
II., by A. P. Lopes de Mendonga. 

Apart from Portuguese history, Portuguese litera- 
ture deserves to be studied. Several pages have been 
devoted to it in the present volume, and with regard 
to the early poetry of the troubadour epoch, the 
author desires to express his obligations to the learned 
introductions of Theophilo Braga, himself a poet of 
no mean rank, to his Antologia Portugaeza, 1876, and 
his Cancioneiro Portuguez, 1878. The glory of Portu- 
guese literature is Camoens, and it is fortunate that 
his great poem, The Luszads, has found an adequate 
translator at last. I know of no translation of any 
classic which can compare with Sir Richard Burton's 
translation of The Lusiads. By his profound know- 
ledge of the Portuguese character no less than of the 
Portuguese language, by his intimate acquaintance 
with the places which Camoens describes, and, above 
all, by his temperament, which resembled that of the 
conquistador-poet, Sir Richard Burton was fitted to 
reproduce for the English people the thoughts and 
words of the greatest Portuguese poet. Every lover 
of Camoens, like every lover of Homer, has been 
tempted to translate his mighty poem ; but, at last, so 
it seems to me, the work of translation has been done 
once for all for Camoens by the loving labour of Sir 



Xll PREFACE. 

Richard Burton, and Englishmen may read The 
Lusiads, reproduced faithfully into their own language, 
alike in spirit and in words. That the life-poem of 
a hero of the sixteenth century should have been 
worthily translated by a hero of the nineteenth, seems 
to me a circumstance of which all lovers of literature 
in both England and Portugal should be glad and 
proud. 

In conclusion, the writing of this volume has been 
to the author a labour of love. In the intervals of a 
minute study of the history of another period, that of 
the French Revolution, he has turned with pleasure 
to the task of writing this " Story of Portugal." He 
has not been able to work at original authorities as 
thoroughly as he might wish, owing to the absorbing 
nature of his more important work, but he hopes the 
time may come when he will be enabled to spend a few 
years among the Archives at the Torre del Tombo, 
and investigate more thoroughly the history of the 
early relations of England and Portugal, and of the 
Portuguese in the East. Is he too presumptuous also 
in hoping that a clearer knowledge of the old and 
tried friendship of the English nation with the Portu- 
guese may influence in some degree the attitude taken 
by a portion of the English people towards their 
ancient ally in the dispute with regard to the extent 
of the Portuguese possessions in Africa ? 

H. MORSE STEPHENS. 
Oxford, 

March I, 1891. 



CONTENTS. 



Early History . 

The importance of, and features of interest in, Portuguese 
history — Greeks, Phoenicians, and Romans — Portugal is not 
the ancient Lusitania — The influence of Rome — The Visigoths 
— The rule of the Mohammedans — -The Christian princes 
commence their incursions — Ferdinand " the Great " captures 
Coimbra — The successes of the Almoravides — The formation 
of the County of Portugal. 

II. 

The County of Portugal — Donna Theresa 

The character of Henry of Burgundy, first Count of Portugal 
— The Countess Theresa — Her policy — Count Henry fights in 
Spain — His death — The regency of Theresa — The nobility and 
the bishops — The wars of Theresa — Theresa styled Infanta — 
The battle of S. Mamede — Theresa introduces the religious 
military orders — Death of Donna Theresa. 



PAGE 

I 



20 



III. 

Portugal becomes a Kingdom — The Reign of 

Affonso Henriques . . . . -34 

The youth of Affonso Henriques — The heroism of Egas Moniz 



XIV CONTENTS. 



— The Gallician wars — Affonso assumes the title of king — He 
is recognized by the Pope — The Treaty of Zamora— -Inde- 
pendence won by the Gallician wars — The state of the Moors — 
Affonso's first war with the Moors — The victory of Ourique — 
Legends concerning it — The wars of conquest — The capture 
of Santarem and Lisbon — The assistance of the English cru- 
saders — Capture of Alcacer do Sal — The Treaty of Cella Nova 
— Affonso taken prisoner at Badajoz — Truce with the Moors 
— Further fighting — Great victory over the Moors at Santa- 
rem — Death of Affonso Henriques. 



IV. 

Portugal attains its European Limits . . 60 

The reign of Sancho I. — The successes of the Moors — 
Sancho's internal administration — His quarrels with the clergy 
and the Pope — The marriages of his children — The reign of 
Affonso II. "the Fat" — Recapture of Alcacer do Sal and 
defeat of the Moors — Arrival of the friars —The reign of 
Sancho II. — The capture of Elvas — His quarrels with his 
bishops — He is deposed by the Pope — The reign of Affonso 
III. — His conquest of the Algarves — His alliance with his 
people — The Cortes — His death. 



The Consolidation of Portugal . . . . 85 

The reign of Diniz — The Order of Christ — His internal 
administration — His encouragement of literature — Portuguese 
poetry — Stanzas of Camoens on Diniz — Affonso IV. " the 
Brave" — The victory of the Salado— Friendship -between 
Portugal and England — The murder of Ines de Castro — Pedro 
"the Severe" — Ferdinand "the Handsome" — The Queen 
Leonor — Riot in Lisbon — War between Portugal and Castile 
— The wickedness of the queen — The Treaty of Salvaterra — 
The Portuguese revolt under Dom John of Aviz — The defence 
of Lisbon — Dom John elected king— The victory of Aljubarrota 
— The Treaty of Windsor and alliance with John of Gaunt — 
Peace with Castile. 



CONTENTS. XV 



VI. 

PAGE 

Portugal during the Age of Exploration . -115 

The policy of John " the Great " — The alliance with England 
— His internal administration — The power of the feudal 
nobility — The capture of Ceuta — The king's sons — The growth 
of Portuguese literature — The reign of Duarte or Edward — 
The expedition to Tangier — The "Constant Prince" — Dispute 
as to the regency — Dom Pedro regent — Overthrown at battle 
of Alfarrobeira — The reign of Affonso V. "the African" — 
His African expeditions — War with Castile — Defeated at Toro 
— His patronage of literature. 



VII. 

The Portuguese Explorers . . . .140 

Prince Henry " the Navigator" and his work — The importance 
of a direct route to India — The discovery of Madeira — The 
story of Robert Machin — The discovery of the Azores — Cape 
Bojador passed — The commencement of the African slave 
trade — The discovery of Guinea, and of Cape Verde — The 
voyage of Cadamosto — Death of Prince Henry — The equator 
crossed — Discovery of the Congo — The Cape of Good Hope 
reached and doubled. 



VIII. 

The Heroic Age of Portugal . . . .158 

John II.. "the Perfect "—Overthrow of the power of the 
nobility — His foreign policy — Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain 
— Friendship with England — His encouragement of explora- 
tion — His court — Emmanuel " the Fortunate " — Expulsion of 
the Jews — His policy and marriages — The discoveries of the 
Portuguese — The seeds of decline — John III. — His policy — 
The abandonment of the ports in Morocco — Corruption at 
Court — Rapid depopulation of Portugal — The Inquisition and 
the Jesuits— Death John III. 



XVI CONTENTS. 

IX. 

PAGE 

The Portuguese in India and the Eastern 

Seas 185 

Romantic interest of the story of the Portuguese in India — 
The voyage of Vasco da Gama — State of India, when he 
reached it — His return — The voyage of Cabral and the victory 
of Pacheco — The viceroyalties of Almeida and Alboquerque 
— The capture of Goa — Alboquerque establishes a factory at 
Malacca and attacks Aden — The policy of Alboquerque — The 
rule of his successors — Their policy and the nature of their 
government— The Christian missionaries — S. Francis Xavier 
— The viceroy alty of Castro — His victory at Diu — The suc- 
cessors of Castro — The settlements in South-east Africa — The 
Portuguese at Malacca and in the Spice Islands — Their com- 
munications with China and Japan — The career of Mendes 
Pinto — Extraordinary energy of the Portuguese in Asia. 

X. 

The Portuguese in Brazil 220 

Importance of Brazil to Portugal — Cabral's discovery of the 
country — Spain abandons its claims — The aboriginal inhabi- 
tants — Early days— The first settlers and their government — 
Emigration from Portugal — The viceroyalty of Thomas de 
Sousa — The Jesuits and their work — The government of Duarte 
da Costa — Failure of the French Huguenots to establish 
themselves in Brazil. 

XI. 

The last Kings of the House of Aviz — Dom 

Sebastian and the Cardinal Henry . . 236 

The rapid decay of Portugal — The accession of Sebastian — 
The regency of Queen Catherine — The regency of the Cardinal 
Henry — The character of Sebastian — His crusading ardour — 
The Portuguese in India — Athaide's defence of Goa— Sebastian 
determines to invade Morocco — His applications for foreign 
aid — His preparations — He lands in Africa— The defeat of 
Alcacer Quibir — The death of Sebastian — The reign of the 
Cardinal Henry. 



CONTENTS. Xvii 

PAGE 

XII. 

Portuguese Literature — Camoens . . -259 

The " Golden Age " of Portuguese literature — The revival of 
classical learning — History of the University of Coimbra — Gil 
Vicente — Bernardim Ribeiro — Sa de Miranda — Ferreira — 
Camoens — His life — His " Lusiads " — Joao de Barros — Other 
writers — Decline of Portuguese literature. 

XIII. 

The Sixty Years' Captivity 278 

The claimants to the Portuguese crown — Defeat of the Prior 
of Crato — Philip II. of Spain recognized as king of Portugal 
— Further efforts and death of the Prior of Crato — The false 
Dom Sebastians — The government of Spain and its disastrous 
results — The reign of Philip II. — The Portuguese in Asia — 
The conquest of Kandy — The missionaries and the Inquisition 
— The Dutch and the English overthrow the Portuguese power 
in Asia — The Dutch in Brazil— Count Maurice of Nassau — 
Results of the rule of Spain. 

XIV. 
The Revolution of 1640 300 

Discontent of the Portuguese at the rule of the Spaniards — 
Fostered by Richelieu-— The Duke and Duchess of Braganza 
— The Duchess of Mantua, and her advisers — Preparations for 
revolt — The leaders — The Revolution of December i, 1640 — 
The Duke of Braganza crowned as John IV. — He obtains help 
from Holland and France — The "Caminha" conspiracy — 
The victory of Montijo — Brazil expels the Dutch — War with 
Holland — The King despairs, and offers to abdicate — Treaty 
of alliance with France — Death of John IV. 

XV. 
The English Alliance 326 

The Queen as Regent — Schomberg organizes thearmy — Victory 
of Elvas— Marriage of Charles II. of England to Catherine of 



XV111 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Braganza — Affonso VI. declares himself of age — The Ministry 
of Cast el Melhor — Victories of the Portuguese — Court revolution 
— Dom Pedro regent — Peace with Spain — The rule of Pedro II. 
as Regent and King — His foreign policy — Death of Charles II. 
of Spain — The Methuen treaty and its results — The war of the 
Spanish Succession — Death of Pedro II. — The decline of the 
Portuguese power in Asia — Prosperity of Brazil — Discovery 
of gold there. 

XVI. 

Portugal in the Eighteenth Century — The 

Marquis of Pombal 349 

Portugal in the eighteenth century — Accession of John V. — 
End of the war of the Spanish Succession— Peace policy of 
the King — His long and prosperous reign — Accession of 
Joseph — Early career of Pombal — The earthquake of Lisbon 
— Pombal, prime minister — He attacks the Jesuits — The 
" Tavora " plot — Banishment of the Jesuits — Short war with 
Spain — Suppression of the Jesuits — Death of Joseph — The 
administration of Pombal — His great reforms — Accession of 
Pedro III. and Maria I. — Disgrace of Pombal — The reign of 
Pedro and Maria — Death of Pedro III. — The Portuguese in 
India in the eighteenth century — The prosperity of Brazil — 
Discovery of diamonds there — Literature in the eighteenth 
century. 

XVII. 

The Era of the French Revolution — The • 
Peninsular War 382 

The French Revolution — Persecution of sympathisers with it 
in Portugal — Dom John sends help to Spain in the war against 
France — Deserted by Spain at the Treaty of Basle — The 
Treaty of San Ildefonso — Alliance with England — Dom John 
declared Regent— The war of 1801 — The Treaty of Badajoz 
— Policy of Napoleon against Portugal— Mission of Lannes — 
Treaty of Fontainebleau, 1807 — Junot invades Portugal — The 
Regent escapes to Brazil — Junot's rule — Forms the Portuguese 
Legion — General insurrection against him — The Portuguese 
appeal to England — Victory of Vimeiro and Convention of 



CONTENTS. XIX 



Cintra — Soult occupies Oporto — Expelled by Wellesley — 
Beresford reorganizes the Portuguese army — The Regency — 
Massena before Torres Vedras — The Portuguese troops during 
the Peninsular War — Conclusion of the War — Death of Queen 
Maria Francisca. 

XVIII. 

Modern Portugal — Civil Wars and the Estab- 
lishment of Parliamentary Government . 409 

John IV. his queen, and his sons Dom Pedro and Dom 
Miguel — Oporto and Lisbon revolt against the Regency — The 
Constitution of 1821 — Brazil declares itself independent — The 
Constitution abrogated — Death of John VI. — The influence of 
the army — The Charter of 1826 — Pedro IV. abdicates in favour 
of Maria II. — Dom Miguel, Regent — Elected King — Reign 
of Dom Miguel — The " Miguelite " war, 1830-34 — Convention 
of Evora Monte— Reign of Maria da Gloria — Civil wars and 
" pronunciamentos " — Era of peaceful parliamentary govern- 
ment — Reigns of Pedro V. and Luis I. — Accession of Carlos I. 
— The Portuguese settlements in Africa— Material prosperity 
— The literary revival — Lessons taught by the history of 
Portugal — Conclusion . 

Index 433 



Genealogical Tables — 

I. The Descendants of John "the Great" .... 139 

II. The Descendants of Emmanuel . . . . . . 279 

I II. The Dukes of Braganza 303 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

PRINCE henry OF PORTUGAL .... Frontispiece 

SPECIMEN OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE .... 9 
VIEW OF OPORTO AND VILLA NOVA FROM THE SERRA 

CONVENT l6 

COIMBRA (PRESENT STATE) 27 

A VIEW OF THE ANCIENT MOORISH BATH AT CINTRA . 42 
ARCH OF THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO AN OLD CHAPEL 

AT LEIRIA 47 

VIEW OF LISBON 50 

CONVENTO DE CHRISTO AT THOMAR . . . 6 1 
PRINCIPAL FAgADE OF THE IGREGA DOS JERONYMOS 

AT BELEM (PRESENT STATE) 68 

GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM . 77 

FACADE OF LISBON CATHEDRAL 82 

INES DE CASTRO 96 

VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON I08 

TWO SIDES OF THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF THE MONASTERY 

OF BATALHA (PRESENT STATE) . . . .112 

KING JOHN THE GREAT Il6 

QUEEN PHILIPPA 1 23 

PORTUGUESE GOLD COINS 1 36, 1 37 

ST. SALVADOR IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . . . 142 

STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY 1 52 



XX11 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY 1 55 

CHART OF GOA ' . . . . l66 

VASCO DA GAMA l68 

ALBOQUERQUE, FROM THE SLOANE MS 194 

ALBOQUERQUE, FROM AN ENGRAVING BY SILVA . . 202 

DOM JOAO CASTRO 2IO 

PROCESSION OF AN AUTO DA FE 232 

LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY .... 239 

VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO . . . 250 

LUIS DE CAMOENS . . 269 

JOAO DE BARROS 275 

PHILIP II 282 

FIGURES OF MEN AT AN AUTO DA FE . . . . 293 

PORTUGUESE GENTLEMEN 310 

JOHN IV . 322 

CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA 328 

PEDRO II 335 

oporto (present state) 339 

specimens of portuguese silver and copper 

coins 344, 345 

the marquis of pombal 356 

BULL FIGHT 366 

A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID- 
SERVANT 384 

MARSHAL JUNOT, DUKE OF ABRANTES . . . -394 

PORTUGUESE PEASANTS 398 

A FEMALE PEASANT FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF 

CALDAS DA RAINHA 403 

[A number of the views illustrating Portuguese scenery are taken 
from photographs ; others are copied from W. M. Kinsey's " Portugal 
Iliustrated," London, 1829; other volumes which have supplied illus- 
trations are " Les Royaumes d'Espagne et Portugal," La Haye, 1720 ; 
Murphy's " Travels in Portugal," 1798; Major's "Prince Henry the 
Navigator," &c, &c] 



THE KINGS OF PORTUGAL 

The House of Burgundy. 

Affonso Henriques (Count of Portugal 1 1 14), King 
Sancho I. "the City-Builder" . 
Affonso II. "the Fat" 

Sancho II. 

Affonso III. "of Boulogne" (Defender of the 

Realm 1246) .... 
Diniz " the Labourer " 
Affonso IV. "the Brave" . 
Pedro I. "the Severe" 
Ferdinand " the Handsome ; ' 



DATE 
I I40 
IT85 

I2II 
1223 

1248 

1279 
1325 
1357 
I367 



The House of Aviz. 

John I. "the Great" . ■ 1385 

Edward . . . . . . . . 1433 

Affonso V. " the African " 1438 

John II. "the Perfect " 1481 

Emmanuel " the Fortunate " 1495 

John III. ... . . . . . . 1521 

Sebastian 1557 

Henry " the Cardinal " 1578 



The Spanish Dominion. 

Philip I. (Philip II. of Spain) . . .. 1580 

Philip II. (Philip III. of Spain) . . . . 1598 

Philip III. (Philip IV. of Spain). . . . 1621 



XXIV 



THE KINGS OF PORTUGAL. 



The House of Braganza. 



John IV. . 

Affonso VI. 

Pedro II. (Regent 1667) 

JohnV. . 

Joseph 

Maria I. and Pedro III. 

Maria I. alone . 

John VI. (Regent 1799) 

Pedro IV. abdicated . 

Maria II. . 

(Miguel, 1828-1834. 
Maria II. . 
Pedro V. . 
Luis I. 
Carlos I. 



1640 
1656 
1683 
1706 
1750 
1777 
1786 
1816 
1826 
1826 

1834 
1853 
1861 
i88q 





= CO <d s ; s ^ y Ma § ^ s rr\ 








< 

a 

D 

DC 

o 

Ql 




THE STORY OF PORTUGAL 



EARLY HISTORY. 



The Story of Portugal possesses a peculiar interest 
from the fact that it is to its history alone that the 
country owes its existence as a separate nation. 
Geographically, the little kingdom is an integral 
portion of the Iberian peninsula, with no natural 
boundaries to distinguish it from that larger portion 
of the peninsula called Spain ; its inhabitants spring 
from the same stock as the Spaniards, and their 
language differs but slightly from the Spanish. Its 
early history is merged in that of the rest of the 
peninsula, and but for two great men, Affonso 
Henriques, the first king of Portugal, and John I., 
the founder of the house of Aviz, Portugal would not 
at the present day rank among the independent 
nations of Europe. The first of these monarchs 
created his dominions into a kingdom like Leon, 
Castile, and Aragon, and the latter encouraged the 
maritime explorations which gave the little country 
an individuality and national existence, of which it 



2 EARLY HISTORY. 

was justly proud. When Philip II. annexed Portugal 
in 1580, it was at least a century too late for the 
Portuguese to coalesce with the Spaniards. They 
had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alboquerque 
and other great captains and explorers, who had shown 
Europe the way to India by sea ; and their tongue 
had been developed by the genius of Camoens and Sa 
de Miranda, from a Romance dialect, similar to those 
used in Gallicia, Castile, or Aragon, into a great 
literary language. Conscious of its national history, 
Portugal broke away again from Spain in 1640, and 
under the protection of England maintained its 
separate existence during the eighteenth century. 
There was some probability of a union with Spain 
at the beginning of the present century, when, after 
the conclusion of the Peninsular War against Na- 
poleon, certain statesmen began to point out the 
anomaly of the Iberian peninsula being divided into 
two separate kingdoms, but a generation of great 
historians and poets soon arose, who reminded the 
people of the days of Portuguese greatness and of 
the glories of the past, and made it impossible for 
the modern Portuguese to lose the consciousness of 
their individuality as a nation. 

But, though the history of Portugal possesses its 
peculiar interest as showing how one small portion 
of the Iberian peninsula maintained a separate 
existence, it presents also many features of romantic 
incident, especially during the epoch when it was for 
a time the leading nation of Europe. The extra- 
ordinary vigour shown by the inhabitants of this 
small corner of Europe during the latter half of the 



INTEREST OF THE STORY. 3 

fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries is 
most remarkable. Not only were Portuguese navi- 
gators the first to creep down the west coast of Africa 
in small boats, in which modern sailors would hardly 
like to cross the English Channel, but they dared 
to double the Cape of Good Hope, and to sail across 
the Indian Ocean to India and Ceylon. Thence they 
ventured round the point of Singapore, and estab- 
lished themselves at Macao, from which centre they 
explored the coasts of China and Japan. In the 
other direction, to the west, they crossed the Atlantic 
and discovered and colonized Brazil. Lisbon became 
the storehouse and centre of distribution for the pro- 
ducts of the East, and attained to a height of wealth 
and luxury unrivalled since the days of ancient 
Rome. The history of the Portuguese "conquista- 
dores" in India for the first hundred years after the 
discovery of the route round the Cape of Good Hope 
is one long romance ; the vastness of their designs, 
the grandeur of their exploits, and the nobility of 
character of their great captains, combine to make 
a story of surpassing interest. And when it is re- 
membered that the soldiers and sailors of these 
great discoverers and conquerors were inhabitants of 
the smallest country in Europe, their success seems 
the more extraordinary, and the interest in the story 
of the nation which trained the Portuguese heroes 
becomes the more absorbing. As invariably happens 
during the heroic age of a nation's history, literature 
and the arts flourished at a time distinguished by 
military and naval prowess, and as Spenser and 
Shakespeare illustrated the Elizabethan age in Eng- 



4 EARLY HISTORY. 

land as much as Drake and Raleigh, the age of Vasco 
da Gama and Alboquerque in Portugal could boast 
also of Gil Vicente, Sa de Miranda and Camoens. 
The abrupt fall of Portugal from the greatness and 
wealth of its heroic period to an insignificant place 
among the nations is as full of the great lessons which 
history teaches as the story of its growth. Just as the 
chivalry induced by the constant fighting with the 
Moors, and the inspiration to great deeds fostered by 
freedom and the good government of worthy kings, 
produced a race of heroes, so not less surely did the 
growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the 
narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for 
Portugal the lofty place which her heroes had won 
for her. These are things well worth pondering upon 
and lessons well worth learning, for the great value 
of the study of history is in teaching such truths 
as these — truths which are eternal, while nations wax 
and wane. 

The early history of the country, which took the name 
of Portugal from the county which formed the nucleus 
of the future kingdom, is identical with that of the 
rest of the Iberian peninsula, but deserves some slight 
notice because of an old misconception, immortalized 
in the title of the famous epic of Camoens, and not 
yet entirely eradicated even from modern ideas. 
Portugal, like the rest of the peninsula, was originally 
inhabited by men of the prehistoric ages, whose 
implements are frequently dug up at the present 
day, and remains of the cave-dwellers have been 
found all over the province of the Alemtejo, and 
more especially in the great cave near Alter do Chao. 



EARLY INHABITANTS. 5 

The most famous prehistoric monument is, however, 
the beautiful " Anta de Guimaraens," about the exact 
date of which Portuguese archaeologists are much exer- 
cised. These prehistoric people were conquered and 
exterminated by the first waves of the great Aryan 
race which has spread all over Europe. There seems 
to be no doubt that the Celts, the first Aryan immi- 
grants, were preceded by a non-Aryan race, which is 
called by different writers the Iberian or the Euskal- 
dunac nation, but this earlier race speedily amalga- 
mated with the Celts, and out of the two together 
were formed the five tribes inhabiting the Iberian 
peninsula, which Strabo names as the Cantabrians, 
the Vasconians, the Asturians, the Gallicians, and 
the Lusitanians. It is Strabo, also, who mentions the 
existence of Greek colonies at the mouths of the Tagus, 
Douro, and Minho, and it is curious to note that the 
old name of Lisbon, Olisipo, was from the earliest times 
identified with that of the hero of the Odyssey, and was 
interpreted to mean the city of Ulysses. The Celtic 
Iberians certainly possessed the elements of civili- 
zation, and from a very early period they had learnt 
to write, and it is a remarkable fact that the formation 
of the letters of their alphabet is traceable rather to 
Greek than Phoenician characters. This is the more 
remarkable, when it is remembered that the Phoe- 
nicians, and not the Greeks, are always mentioned 
in history as monopolizing the trade of Iberia. 
The Carthaginians, though they had colonies all 
over the peninsula, established their rule mainly 
over the south and east of it, having their capital at 
Carthagena or Nova Carthago, and seem to have 



6 EARLY HISTORY. 

neglected the more barbarous northern and western 
provinces. 

It was for this reason that the Romans found far 
more difficulty in subduing these latter provinces 
than they had in taking possession of the former, 
which the Carthaginians had already conquered. The 
Romans were at first satisfied with these provinces, 
which were ceded to them after the conclusion of the 
second Punic war, but eventually they began to spread 
over the hitherto neglected districts ; and in 189 B.C. 
Lucius vEmilius Paullus defeated the Lusitanians, and 
in 185 B.C. Gaius Calpurnius forced his way across the 
Tagus. There is no need here to discuss the gradual 
conquest by the Romans of that part of the peninsula 
which includes the modern kingdom of Portugal, but 
it is necessary to speak of the gallant shepherd 
Viriathus, who sustained a stubborn war against the 
Romans from 149 B.C. until he was assassinated in 
139 B.C. because he has been generally claimed as 
the first national hero of Portugal. This claim has 
been based upon the assumed identification of the 
modern Portugal with the ancient Lusitania, an 
identification which has spread its roots deep into 
Portuguese literature, and has until recently been 
generally accepted. 

The first Portuguese writer who assumed the 
identity of Portugal with Lusitania was Dom Garcia 
de Meneses, Bishop of Evora, who wrote in the reign 
of John II. at the close of the fifteenth century, 
though the two terms had been used distinctively 
by early chroniclers, such as Lucas de Tuy in his 
"Chronicon Mundi," and Matthew de Pisano in his 



PORTUGAL IS NOT LUSITANIA. J 

" Guerra de Ceuta." The mistaken notion was further 
developed in the days of the Renaissance and of 
the Revival of Learning, and became generally 
accepted by the close of the sixteenth century, 
and exaggerated by the very title of such books 
as the " Monarchia Lusitana " of Bernardo de Brito 
and the " De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae " of the great 
antiquary Andrea de Resende. In fact, the Por- 
tuguese writers of that epoch delighted in calling 
Portugal by the classical name of Lusitania, and 
Camoens, the very greatest of them all, has, by the 
title of his famous epic, " Os Lusiadas " or " The 
Lusiads," stamped the mistake permanently on Por- 
tuguese literature. 

This false identification has had important his- 
torical consequences. Modern writers have on this 
supposition spoken of the Portuguese as a distinct 
branch of the Celtic population of the Iberian penin- 
sula identical with the tribe of Lusitanians spoken of 
by Strabo. They have further identified them with 
the Lusitanians who struggled so gallantly against the 
Roman Republic under the leadership of Punicus 
and Viriathus ; they have found passages in the 
Latin historians describing the Lusitanians, and have 
moralized upon the manner in which the character- 
istics of the ancient Lusitanians re-appear in the 
modern Portuguese. The identity of two nations 
must consist in proving their perfect succession in 
either race or territory, and in neither respect can 
the identity be shown in the present instance. The 
Celtic tribe of Lusitanians dwelt, according to Strabo, 
in the districts north of theTagus, while the Lusitania 



8 EARLY HISTORY. 

of the Latin historians of the Republic undoubtedly lay 
to the south of that river though it was not used as 
the name of a province until the time of Augustus, 
when the old division of the peninsula into Hispania 
Citerior and Hispania Ulterior was superseded by 
the division into Betica, Tarraconensis, and Lusi- 
tania. Neither in this division, nor in the division of 
the peninsula into the five provinces of Tarraconensis, 
Carthaginensis, Betica, Lusitania, and Gallicia, under 
Hadrian, was the province called Lusitania co- 
terminous with the modern kingdom of Portugal. 
Under each division the name was given to a district 
south of the Tagus, and therefore not embracing the 
modern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro, Tras- 
os-Montes, and Beira. 

It is important to grasp the results of this mis- 
conception, for it emphasizes the fact that the history 
of Portugal for many centuries is merged in that of 
the rest of the Iberian peninsula, and explains why 
it is unnecessary to study the wars of the Lusitanians 
with the Roman Republic, as is often done in histories 
of Portugal. Like the rest of the peninsula Portuga 1 
was thoroughly Latinized in the days of the Roman 
Empire ; Roman colonic? and municipia were estab- 
lished in places suited for trade, such as Lisbon 
and Oporto, and commanding high-roads, such as 
Lamego and Viseu ; Roman institutions were gene- 
rally adopted, and the Latin language super- 
seded the old Celtic dialects. The chief Portuguese 
towns, like those in the rest of the peninsula, were 
granted the " Jus Latinum " by Vespasian, and' all 
the inhabitants became Roman citizens under the 




SPECIMEN OF ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 

( The Cast ell u in of Q. Sertorius at Evora. ) 



10 EARLY HISTORY. 

famous decree of Caracalla. The influence of the 
mighty sway of Rome has left its traces all over the 
peninsula, and to as great degree in Portugal as in 
Spain. Portuguese law is based on the old Roman 
law, as well as the Portuguese language upon Latin ; 
and many Portuguese institutions show the direct 
influence of Roman government. Notably is this 
the case with regard to municipal institutions ; many 
Portuguese cities can boast of distinct existence ever 
since the Roman Empire, and the duumviri and 
boni homines of those days have their counterparts 
in the municipal government of the present day. 
During these days of peace and prosperity Portugal 
also received the Christian religion, and welcomed it 
as cordially as France and Spain, and bishoprics were 
founded which still exist. In more material things 
the dominion of Rome has left its traces in the roads 
and bridges made by that race of engineers, in the 
beautiful remains at Leiria, and in the aqueduct and 
the ruins of the temple of Diana at Evora. 

Peaceful existence under the sway of Rome con- 
tinued until the beginning of the fifth century, when 
the Goths first forced their way across the Pyrenees. 
During the first barbarian occupation, the Suevi 
seized Gallicia and Tarraconensis, the Alans Lusitania 
and Carthaginensis, and the Vandals Betica or 
Andalusia. The irruption of the Visigoths changed 
this settlement ; the Alans and the Vandals crossed to 
Africa, and the Suevi occupied Betica and Lusitania. 
The Visigothic Empire left but slight traces in Portu- 
gal, slighter even than in Spain, and the Portuguese 
nobility do not, like the Spanish, invariably lay claim 



THE VISIGOTHS. II 

to Gothic descent Ethnologically the Gothic ele- 
ment is very slight in Portugal, though the country 
passed under the rule of the Visigoths during the 
reign of Ataulphus, who married the sister of the 
Roman Emperor Honorius, and remained part of 
their dominion for three centuries. While the Roman 
rule left so many traces of its existence, and entirely 
modelled the language and civilization alike of Spain 
and Portugal, that of the Visigoths, which lasted 
nearly as long, left hardly any traces at all. The 
cause is to be found in the natural assimilation of a 
race in a low state of civilization to the status of a 
higher race. The number of Romans who actually 
settled in the peninsula must have been very small, 
yet the Celts adopted their language and civilization, 
while the conquering Visigoths, on the other hand, 
adopted the religion and civilization of the people 
they had conquered. The Visigothic power reached 
its zenith in the reign of Euric at the end of the fifth 
century, and afterwards steadily declined, being torn 
by internal dissensions, and especially by the great 
struggle between the nobility and the rulers of the 
Christian Church. It was the leaders of the latter 
party, Count Julian and Archbishop Oppus, who 
invited the Mohammedans from Africa into Spain, 
and in fighting against them, Roderick, the last Visi- 
gothic king, was killed near Xeres, at the battle of 
the Guadelete, in 711. 

The history of the Mohammedans in the Iberian 
peninsula has been treated in another volume of this 
Series, 1 and it is only necessary to note here that under 

1 " The Moors in Spain." By Stanley Lane-Poole. 4th ed. 1890. 



12 EARLY HISTORY. 

the wise and tolerant rule of the Ommeyad sultans, 
the rich plains alike of Spain and Portugal maintained 
the prosperity which they had enjoyed under the 
Roman emperors and the Visigothic kings, and that 
the old Roman colonic? and municipia retained their 
Roman self-government, and Lisbon and Oporto 
increased in wealth and commercial importance. 
Though the Arabs were fanatical conquerors, the 
Ommeyads were enlightened rulers, and the Chris- 
tian religion was protected, though not encouraged, 
as long as the Christian bishops refrained from active 
exertions against the Mohammedans. In Portugal 
also, owing to its distance from Cordova, the duties 
of government were granted almost entirely to the 
Mosarabs, as the numerous native converts to Islam 
were called, men who felt the importance of keeping 
the adherents of the two prevailing religions from 
coming to blows. 

But this peaceful state of things was not to last ; 
the Iberian peninsula, which had remained prosperous 
under Romans, Visigoths, and Mohammedans, was to 
suffer centuries of fierce war, war which was to devas- 
tate its fields and destroy its cities, but from which its 
people were to develop into a race of hardy and 
chivalrous warriors. The people of the peninsula 
under the rule of foreign sovereigns had become soft 
and weak, occupied only in accumulating wealth, in 
which to live in comfort and luxury. Architectural 
remains of the first thousand years of the Christian 
era show to what a pitch of comfort the people had 
attained, but the easy conquests of the Visigoths and 
the Moors prove that they had become enervated by 



OPORTO CAPTURED FROM THE MOORS. 13 

luxury. During the next five hundred years a dif- 
ferent state of things was to appear. The land and 
the cities alike of Spain and Portugal were to be 
ravaged and destroyed in terrible wars, and a race of 
soldiers, bred in all the laws and customs of chivalry, 
was to arise — a race which, after finding no further 
exercise for its energies at home, was to extend its 
power to India and to the New World, as yet unknown, 
across the Atlantic. Whether it were better to spend 
lives of luxurious ease or to become warriors was 
a question not asked of the people of the Iberian 
peninsula ; they had no choice in the matter ; but it 
must not be forgotten in watching the gradual develop- 
ment of this race of warriors in one part of the 
peninsula, in Portugal, that it was, when formed, to 
do great things for Europe and for the advancement 
of a higher civilization than that of the stormy 
centuries in which it arose. 

Towards the close of the tenth century as the 
Ommeyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian 
princes of Visigothic descent, who dwelt in the 
mountains of the Asturias, began to grow more 
bold in their attacks on the declining power ; 
and in 997 Bermudo II., king of Gallicia, won 
back the first portion of modern Portugal from the 
Moors by seizing Oporto and occupying the province 
now known as the Entre Minho e Douro. At the 
beginning of the eleventh century, the great Moorish 
caliphate finally broke up, and independent Moham- 
medan emirs established themselves in every large 
city, against whom the Christian princes waged 
incessant and successful wars. In these wars the 



14 EARLY HISTORY. 

Celtic inhabitants of the peninsula took but little 
part ; the Moorish armies consisted of Mohammedans, 
the descendants of the fierce soldiers of Abder-Rahman 
and a few Mosarabs, while the Christian armies 
consisted only of the feudal chivalry of the northern 
mountains. 

In each army different customs prevailed ; the 
strength of the Moors lay in their perfect military 
discipline and absolute obedience to their generals ; 
that of the Christians in the new impulse to valour 
given to each individual knight by the laws of 
chivalry. On neither side was personal ambition 
without an incentive ; Moorish generals hoped to 
become emirs, Christian knights, feudal counts. The 
finest soldiers of both armies were foreigners to the 
peninsula, being on the one side Africans, on the 
other either of Gothic descent or else the flower of 
the chivalry of northern Europe, which went to win 
its spurs in the wars against the unbelievers, and 
especially admired and followed the Cid, Rodrigo 
Diaz de Bivar. Between these two contending bands 
of warriors the unfortunate Celtic inhabitants of the 
middle zone of the peninsula were crushed ; those of 
the mountains of the north were by feudal custom 
obliged to take up arms to follow their lords, and 
after a century or two those of the centre by the force 
of necessity became warriors also, and proceeded to 
drive the Moors back to Africa. 

The eleventh century was at first marked by great 
Christian successes, especially in the west of the 
peninsula. In 1055 Ferdinand "the Great," king of 
Leon, Castile, and Gallicia, invaded the Beira ; in 1057 



THE COUNTY OF CO I M BRA. 1 5 

he took Lamego and Viseu ; and in 1064 Coimbra, 
where he died in the following year. He arranged for 
the government of his conquests in the only way 
possible under the feudal system, by forming them into 
a county, extending to the Mondego, with Coimbra 
as its capital. The first count of Coimbra was 
Sesnando, a recreant Arab vizir, who had advised 
Ferdinand to invade his district and had assisted in 
its easy conquest. He had married a Christian, and was 
ready to defend his new religion and the dominions 
he held under the Christian king with all the more 
vigour from the knowledge that the Moorish emirs 
and walis to the south regarded him as an apostate. 
But though Sesnando's county of Coimbra was the 
great frontier county of Gallicia, and the most 
important conquest of Ferdinand " the Great," it was 
not thence that the kingdom which was to develop 
out of his dominions was to take its name. Among 
the counties of Gallicia was one called the " co- 
mitatus Portucalensis," because it contained within 
its boundaries the famous city at the mouth of the 
Douro, known in Roman and Greek times as the 
Portus Cale, and in modern days as Oporto, or " The 
Port." This county of Oporto or Portugal was the 
one destined to give its name to the future kingdom, 
and was held at the time of Ferdinand's death by 
Nuno Mendes, the founder of one of the most famous 
families in Portuguese history. 

Ferdinand " the Great " was succeeded in his three 
kingdoms of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, by his three 
sons, Sancho, Alfonso, and Garcia, the last of whom 
received the two counties of Coimbra and Oporto as 




Q ^ 



THE WARS WITH THE MOORS. 1J 

fiefs of Gallicia, and maintained Nuno Mendes and 
Sesnando as his feudatories. Under them were many 
feudal barons, who held their lands on condition of 
military service. It is fortunately not necessary to 
enter into the history of the wars between the sons 
of Ferdinand ; it is enough to say that the second 
of them, Alfonso of Leon, eventually united all his 
father's kingdoms in 1073, as Alfonso VI. The 
successes of the Christians aroused the stubborn 
resistance of the Moors ; a fresh wave of fanaticism 
passed over the Mohammedans of Africa and of the 
peninsula, and a new dynasty, that of the Almoravides 
arose, which subdued the various emirs and walis who 
had usurped the government of various portions of 
the old Ommeyad caliphate, and once more united 
the Moorish power. The new dynasty collected great 
Moslem armies, and in 1086 Yusuf Ibn Teshfln routed 
Alfonso utterly at the battle of Zalaca, and recon- 
quered the peninsula up to the Ebro. In this battle all 
the chivalry of the Moors and Christians was engaged, 
and among the latter was Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, 
followed by his knights. Alfonso tried to compensate 
for this defeat and his loss of territory in the east 
of his dominions by conquests in the west, and in 
1093 ne advanced to the Tagus and took Santarem 
and Lisbon, and made Sueiro Mendes count of the 
new district. But these conquests he did not hold for 
long ; the Almoravides were in the full flush of 
success, and their armies were made almost irresistible 
by the fresh fanaticism inspired into them. Their 
conquests in the east of the peninsula after the battle 
of Zalaca were followed by rapid successes in the 



15 EARLY HISTORY. 

west. In 1093 Seyr, the general of the Almoravide 
caliph Yusuf, took Evora from the Emir of Badajoz ; 
in 1094 he took Badajoz itself, and killed the emir; 
and retaking Lisbon and Santarem forced his way up 
to the Mondego. To resist this revival of the Moham- 
medan power, Alfonso summoned the chivalry of 
Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who 
joined his army eager to win their spurs, and win 
dominions for themselves were Count Raymond of 
Toulouse and Count Henry of Burgundy. To the 
former, Alfonso gave his legitimate daughter Urraca 
and Gallicia ; to the latter, his illegitimate daughter 
Theresa, and the counties of Oporto and Coimbra, 
with the title of Count of Portugal. 

The history of Portugal now becomes distinct from 
that of the rest of the peninsula, and it is from the 
year 1095 that the history of Portugal commences. 
The son of Henry of Burgundy was the great 
monarch Alfonso Henriques, the hero of his country 
and the founder of a great dynasty. Up to this time 
it has been impossible to separate the history of 
Portugal from that of Spain, but it has been necessary 
to point out the fact that the history of the two 
countries had been hitherto identical, in order to 
dissipate the common error that the Spaniards and 
Portuguese belong to distinct races. The fact that 
the history of Portugal does not begin until such a 
comparatively recent date teaches another important 
lesson, that the nations of modern Europe must not 
be looked upon as having been complete entities from 
the earliest times, but in some instances owe their 
distinct nationality at the present day to fortuitous 
circumstances. 



THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 19 

In 1095 a powerful county of Portugal was formed : 
its growth to a kingdom and the extension of its 
dominions by conquests from the Moors will now have 
to be studied, as well as its difficulty in maintaining its 
independence among the other nations of the penin- 
sula, before it can be seen as the leading nation of the 
world, in the van of the march of European civilization. 




TI. 



THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 



COUNT Henry of Burgundy, his wife Theresa, and 
his son Affonso Henriques, were the three founders 
of Portugal, and they were all of them individuals 
of marked personality. They were typical figures of 
their epoch, possessing the curious mixture of virtues 
and vices which characterized the age of chivalry. 

Count Henry was the second son of Henry, who 
was the third son of Robert, first Duke of Burgundy, 
and he was like his father and grandfather, a knight 
of the old French school, combining a passionate 
love for adventure and for war with an ambitious and 
self-seeking temperament. He had come to Spain to 
the assistance of the Christians, as much with the 
purpose of founding a dynasty as for the love of war, 
and from the first he turned his thoughts more to the 
hope of succeeding his father-in-law, Alfonso VI., in 
one at least of his kingdoms, than to carving a king- 
dom for himself out of the dominions of the Arab 
caliphs. He received his county of Portugal, the dowry 
of his wife, Theresa, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso 
VI., as a direct fief of the crown of Gallicia, one of the 



COUNT HENRY OF BURGUNDY. 2,1 

three kingdoms of his father-in-law. This kingdom 
Alfonso had granted, as a fief, not as a kingdom, to 
Count Raymond of Toulouse, who had married his 
legitimate daughter, Urraca, and Count Henry highly 
disapproved of being in some sort a feudatory of his 
fellow-adventurer. At first the jealousy between 
Henry and Raymond did not show itself; for Count 
Henry had to fight hard to defend his southern fron- 
tiers against the incursions of the Mohammedan 
general Seyr. To his help he summoned the chivalry 
of France, and the knights of his native country 
flocked to his assistance, and were promoted to high 
military positions and to feudal dignities by him. 
Battle succeeded battle without either side gaining 
any decisive victory, until after seven years' hard 
fighting both Christians and Moors decided to rest 
awhile to recover from their exhaustion. 

Count Henry was, however, too much the restless 
knight of the Middle Ages to remain quiet long. 
Since his Portuguese warriors were weary, and the 
battle-ground for miles on each bank of the Tagus 
was laid utterly waste, he could fight no longer in his 
own country against the unbelievers, and so hurried 
off in 1 103 with Maurice, Bishop of Coimbra, to fight 
them in Palestine. For two years he served in the 
expedition known as the Second Crusade, and when 
he returned he was still ready for more fighting at 
home. His restlessness was typical of his epoch. The 
knights of Jjie Crusades were always knights-errant, 
always in search of adventure, and never satiated 
with war. This spirit was encouraged by the Church, 
and while the Almoravide caliph Yusuf was orga- 



22 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

nizing his military forces for a fresh assault on the 
Christians, Count Henry, on the other hand, went off 
in search of adventure abroad, leaving his county 
under the government of his wife, Theresa. 

Fortunately for Portugal, Theresa was a singularly 
able woman. Beautiful and accomplished, the idol of 
poets and musicians, and capable of inspiring the 
deepest devotion, she threw herself heart and soul into 
the task which her restless husband abandoned, and 
spent the years of his absence in training the Portu- 
guese for fresh struggles. She too possessed all 
the faults and virtues of her epoch ; passionate to 
a degree in every sense, she became the adored 
divinity of her nobles, and prepared herself during 
this brief regency for the longer regency of her 
widowhood. Her great aim at this time, as it was 
throughout her stormy life, was to make the Portu- 
guese nobles regard themselves as Portuguese, and 
not as Gallicians, and thus prepare them to make 
their country independent. But though her chief 
endeavour was to heighten and animate the spirit of 
her nobles, she did not neglect other classes of her 
subjects ; she encouraged the citizens of her cities in 
their ideas of municipal independence, and urged 
them to keep their fortifications in good repair, and 
to be ready to go forth to war under captains of their 
own choice, instead of under hereditary leaders from 
among the nobility. The result of this policy was that, 
in the next generation, the military retainers of the 
great nobles, who resided in their castles, went forth 
to fight side by side with the free citizens under their 
elected leaders, and that her son was able to lead two 



DEATH OF ALFONSO VI. 23 

distinct classes of soldiers under his banners, who 
vied with each other in prowess against foreign foes, 
while they were a check upon each other at home, 
and could be played off against one another in case 
either class became dangerous to their suzerain. 

When Count Henry returned from Palestine in 
1 105, he became united with his former brother-in- 
arms, Count Raymond of Gallicia, by a common 
feeling of jealousy. Both looked forward to inherit- 
ing portions of King Alfonso's dominions, and were 
extremely suspicious lest the old monarch should 
favour his natural son, Sancho, whose mother was 
a Moorish princess, Zaida, daughter of Ibn Abbad, 
Emir of Seville. In their dislike for Sancho they 
were encouraged by the priests, to whom Alfonso's 
affection for a Moorish woman was abhorrent, and 
an agreement was made between the brothers-in-law 
by an ambitious French monk, named Hugh of 
Cluny, afterwards Bishop of Oporto, to oust the son 
of the infidel. This peaceful arrangement had no 
result, owing to the death of Count Raymond in 
1 107, followed by that of young Sancho at the battle 
of Ucles with the Moors in 1108, and finally by the 
death of Alfonso VI. himself in 1109. 

The king's death brought about the catastrophe. 
He left all his dominions to his legitimate daughter, 
Urraca, with the result that there was five years of 
fierce fighting between Henry of Burgundy, Alfonso 
Raimundes, the son of Count Raymond, Alfonso I., 
of Aragon, and Queen Urraca, during which the 
Almoravides quietly consolidated their power and 
prepared for a fresh attack upon the Christians. 



24 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

Nothing proves more certainly that the crusading 
spirit was often only a cloak for personal ambition 
than this terrible internecine war, in which princes 
and nobles changed sides and broke their plighted 
words with a recklessness supposed to be distinctive of 
a most abandoned age. While they fought with each 
other, the Mohammedans advanced. The Almora- 
vide Ali, who had succeeded his father, Yusuf, in 
Spain and Morocco, reconquered Talavera and Madrid, 
and laid siege to Toledo, while his famous general, 
Seyr Ibn Abi-Bekr, reconquered the Moorish emirs of 
the western towns, who had revolted, and in 1112 
besieged Santarem, which then formed the southern- 
most outpost of the county of Portugal. Before he 
took it however, Seyr died, and Count Henry, who 
had been forced to come south in order to meet the 
invaders, once more returned to continue his wars with 
the Christian princes. Only one incident in Count 
Henry's march against the Mohammedans deserves 
record, and that is the refusal of the citizens of 
Coimbra to admit their count into their city, or to 
follow him to the front, unless he confirmed the privi- 
leges granted to them by Donna Theresa, and granted 
them certain fresh concessions. Henry was forced to 
grant them, and on the death of Seyr, he again ad- 
vanced into Spain, and joined in further intrigues. 
These did not last long, for on May 1, 11 14, Count 
Henry died at Astorga, not without a suspicion that 
he had been poisoned by Queen Urraca, leaving his 
wife Theresa as regent during the minority of his 
son, AfTonso Henriques, who was but three years old. 
Theresa, who made the ancient city of Guimaraens 



THE POLICY OF THERESA. 2$ 

her capital, devoted all her energies to building up 
her son's dominions into an independent state ; and 
under her rule, while the Christian states of Spain 
were torn by internecine war, the Portuguese began to 
recognize Portugal as their country, and to cease 
from calling themselves Gallicians. This distinction 
between Portugal and Gallicia was the first step 
towards the formation of a national spirit, which 
grew into a desire for national independence. The 
people were the same in origin, and spoke the same 
language. The province of Gallicia had both in 
Roman and Gothic times spread as far south as the 
Tagus, and no distinction had been made between 
the Gallicians of the north and south until Alfonso 
VI. had given Count Henry his large domain. It was 
Donna Theresa who first tried to make the distinction 
more marked. Count Henry had looked upon his 
county as a step to the succession to the kingdom of 
Gallicia, if not to the two kingdoms of Leon and 
and Gallicia. Donna Theresa, on the other hand, 
looked upon Portugal as an independent country, and 
desired rather to extend her frontiers at the expense 
of Gallicia than to succeed to the throne of that 
kingdom. 

In her efforts to promote the unity of Portugal and 
its independence of Gallicia, Donna Theresa was 
warmly seconded by her people, and especially by 
the inhabitants of the cities whom she favoured, while 
among the ruling classes she had the support of the 
clergy and the opposition of the greater part of the 
nobility. Most of her nobles owned great estates 
in both Gallicia and Portugal, for the feudal grants of 



26 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

land conquered by the Christian kings from the Mo- 
hammedans were generally made to noblemen, who 
had led large contingents to their help. These nobles 
were naturally opposed to a separation between Por- 
tugal and Gallicia, which would make them feuda- 
tories to two different lords, and often oblige them in 
case of disputes between their suzerains to sacrifice 
one of their properties. On the other hand, the Portu- 
guese bishops were suffragans of the reconstructed 
archbishopric of Braga, and owed no obedience to any 
Gallician bishop ; indeed, they were especially hostile 
to the wealthiest of them, the powerful bishop of the 
great pilgrim city of Santiago daCampostella. It has 
been said that many of the Christian bishoprics con- 
tinued to exist during the Moorish occupation, and 
had a continuous history from the first conversion of 
the people to Christianity, but some had lapsed owing 
to the poverty of their sees. The advance of the Chris- 
tian princes, which was due as much to religious as to 
political motives, brought about the re-establishment 
of the bishoprics which had lapsed, and the increased 
endowment of those which had continued to exist. 
The new bishops held a very different position from 
their predecessors. They were not the poor shepherds 
of poor flocks, in a land ruled by infidels, but powerful 
barons, holding great estates on military tenure, who 
united the influence of their sacred rank to their 
temporal power. The metropolitan of these Portu- 
guese bishops was the Archbishop of Braga, and it was 
naturally his policy to support the independence of 
the county of Portugal, for it was better for him to 
be the head of the Church of an important county 




s 

"^ 
«• 






28 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

than to be merely one of the archbishops of the 
kingdom of Gallicia. This was the attitude taken up 
by the first great Archbishop of Braga, Mauricio 
Burdino, a Frenchman, and the companion in Pales- 
tine of Count Henry, who had promoted him from the 
bishopric of Coimbra to the metropolitan see. In it 
he was supported by Hugh, Bishop of Oporto, the 
most wealthy of his suffragans, and the history of the 
ensuing century gives many instances of the patriot- 
ism of the Portuguese bishops, and of their efforts to 
promote and maintain the independence of the new 
state. 

The regency of Donna Theresa was marked by 
many struggles, the history of which it is now difficult 
to trace, but throughout them all, the growing unity 
of Portugal can be perceived. She took a keen inte- 
rest in the politics of Gallicia, for she hoped to extend 
her frontiers to the north, and in 1116 she led her 
forces in person to the assistance of Diogo Gelmires, 
Bishop of Santiago da Campostella, and the Count de 
Trava, who had headed a rising, intended to depose 
Queen Urraca, and to place her young son Alfonso 
Raimundes at once upon the "throne of Gallicia. In 
this war Theresa took the towns of Tuy and Orense, 
and the warrior countess met, in the course of it for 
the first time, the young hidalgo, Don Fernando 
Peres de Trava, with whom she fell passionately in 
love, and whose history was for the future to be linked 
with hers. In 11 17 the Moors, under their caliph 
AH in person, invaded her dominions, and besieged 
her in Coimbra, but she succeeded in beating them 
off, and spent the following years in peace and quiet, 



WAR BETWEEN THERESA AND URRACA. 20, 

in the constant company of her lover, whom she 
made governor of Coimbra and Oporto, and Count 
of Trastamare ; while to his elder brother, Bermudo 
Peres de Trava, she gave the hand of her second 
daughter by Count Henry, the Donna Urraca, and 
the governorship of Viseu. 

But this quiet enjoyment of peace and love was 
not long allowed to the beautiful ruler of Portugal. 
Her half-sister Urraca, the Queen of Castile, Leon, 
and Gallicia, had been hitherto too much engaged in 
fighting with her second husband, Alfonso I. of Aragon, 
to pay any attention to her ; but she too was a warrior 
princess, and in 1 121 she ordered Theresa to surrender 
the city of Tuy. Theresa refused, and Urraca led an 
army against her, which defeated the Portuguese at 
Tuy, and eventually the queen took the Countess of 
Portugal prisoner after a long siege of the castle of 
Lanhoso. It seemed as if the nascent independence 
of Portugal was about to be crushed, but Bishop 
Gelmires came to the assistance of Theresa, who had 
done so much for his friends and relatives, the De 
Travas, and threatened to attack Urraca unless she 
made peace with her half-sister. Urraca was forced 
to comply, and the treaty of peace which was then 
signed marks another stage in the growth of the 
independence of Portugal, for in it Donna Theresa 
is styled Infanta, and treated as the equal of Queen 
Urraca, who further promised to cede to her the 
cities and districts of Toro, Zamora, and Salamanca. 

For the next few years the careers of the half- 
sisters were singularly similar. Queen Urraca 
showered favours on her lover, Don Pedro de Lara, 



30 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

until her young son, Alfonso Raimundes, assisted by 
Bishop Gelmires, revolted against her ; while Donna 
Theresa, with equal blindness, devoted herself to her 
love for Don Fernando Peres de Trava, and thus 
aroused the hatred of her boy-son Affonso Henriques 
and of Paio Mendes, who in 1121 had succeeded 
Mauricio Burdin© as Archbishop of Braga. Her 
quarrel with Paio Mendes commenced in the year 
after he became archbishop, and well illustrates the 
attitude of the Portuguese bishops. As long as 
Theresa had remained the living symbol of Portu- 
guese unity and independence the bishops had 
followed her, but as soon as she showed her love for 
a Gallician nobleman they turned against her. Paio 
Mendes was quite ready to lead the malcontents, for 
he was the brother of Count Sueiro Mendes of Oporto, 
surnamed the Great, who was the head of the purely 
Portuguese, as opposed to the mixed Portuguese and 
Gallician, nobility. In 1122 Archbishop Paio pro- 
tested against the gift of so many important posts 
to Don Fernando, and the proud countess imme- 
diately cast him into prison. She was obliged in a 
few days to release him, for fear of a papal inter- 
dict ; but she had made a bitter enemy, who was 
soon to have an opportunity for revenge. 

The discontent with Theresa did not show itself 
openly until 1127, when Alfonso Raimundes, who had 
succeeded his mother Urraca in the preceding year, 
and taken the title of Alfonso VII., King of Castile, 
Leon, and Gallicia, invaded Portugal and forced 
Theresa to recognize him as suzerain, and to sur- 
render her claims to Tuy and Orense. The citizens 



DEFEAT OF DONNA THERESA. 3 1 

of Guimaraens, the capital of the county, at once 
declared Affonso Henriques of age, and competent to 
reign ; but Alfonso VII. marched against the city, and 
Egas Moniz, the former tutor of the young count, 
who was its governor, in order to make peace, 
promised on behalf of his former pupil that he would 
ratify Theresa's submission. Affonso Henriques, how- 
ever, though only a boy of seventeen, absolutely refused 
to recognize the submission made by his mother and 
his tutor, and in 11 28 he raised an army with the de- 
clared intention of expelling Donna Theresa and her 
lover from the country. In this movement the boy 
was encouraged by Archbishop Paio and his brother 
Sueiro Mendes, by one of his brothers-in-law, Sancho 
Nunes, by his half-brother, Pedro Affonso, an ille- 
gitimate son of Count Henry, by Emigio Moniz, and 
by Garcia Soares. Donna Theresa also collected an 
army, consisting chiefly of Gallicians, but she was 
defeated by her son at the battle of S. Mamede, near 
Guimaraens, and taken prisoner, and was shortly after- 
wards expelled, with Don Fernando, from the county 
she had ruled so long. 

Thus ended the regency of Donna Theresa. She 
had not added a single town to her son's dominions, 
for her early conquests had been recaptured by Queen 
Urraca and Alfonso VII. But she had done more 
for Portugal than making conquests. She had asserted 
its independence, and though she seldom called her- 
self Queen, she never took any title less than that of 
Infanta. She had also prepared for the extension of 
Portugal towards the south at the end of her regency 
by encouraging the settlement of the orders of 



32 THE COUNTY OF PORTUGAL. 

religious knights there. To the Knights Templars 
she had granted, in 1128, the frontier town of Soure ; 
to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre S. Payo de 
Gouvea, Lodeiro, and Paeos de Penalva ; and to the 
Knights of the Hospital, the town of Leca. From 
these beginnings great results were to arise during 
the reign of her son. 

The last years of Theresa's life were quite out of 
keeping with the brilliancy of her regency. After 
her expulsion she wandered about in the mountains 
of Gallicia with her lover until her death, in poverty, 
on November 1, 11 30. Her body was taken to 
Portugal, and buried beside that of Count Henry, her 
husband, in the Cathedral of Braga, and both of them 
are reverenced by modern Portuguese as the founders 
of the independence of their country. Her history is a 
strange one. To political instincts and a capability 
for government which rank her among the most re- 
markable women of the whole period of the Middle 
Ages; to a manly courage, which inspired her to lead 
her soldiers in person to the fight and enabled her to 
withstand a Moorish siege, she joined the most 
feminine of qualities — that of entire devotion to the 
man she loved. Her love for Fernando Peres may 
have made her deviate from the path she should have 
followed as regent of Portugal, but it does not make 
her a less interesting character in the eyes of posterity. 
If she loved too greatly, she was greatly punished, 
and her death in exile more than atoned for the 
favour she bestowed on her lover. The task com- 
menced by Count Henry and Donna Theresa was 
destined to be accomplished by one greater than 



AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 



33 



either of them, by the hero of early Portuguese 
history, Affonso Henriques, who united his father's 
restless and chivalrous valour with the political 
ability of his mother. 




III. 



PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. THE REIGN 
OF AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 



Affonso Henriques, the only son of Count 
Henry and Donna Theresa, who at the age of seven- 
teen, after the battle of S. Mamede, began his long 
and prosperous reign, was one of the heroes of the 
Middle Ages. He succeeded to the government of 
Portugal when it was still regarded generally, in spite 
of Theresa's claims, as a county of Gallicia, and after 
nearly sixty years of incessant fighting he bequeathed 
to his son a powerful little kingdom, whose indepen- 
dence was unquestioned, and whose fame was spread 
abroad throughout Christendom by the victories of 
its first monarch over the Moors. The story of his 
early years abounds in miraculous legends and 
tales, like those told of the youth of Arthur and 
Charlemagne, which, if not credible in themselves, are 
interesting as showing the feelings of the Portuguese 
chroniclers and poets towards him. His boyish 
exploits in the mountains around Guimaraens, in 
which he is said to have fought wolves as he after- 
wards fought the Moors, and the tale of the fire 



AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 35 

which played about his cradle without hurting or 
even terrifying the youthful hero, savour of the 
marvellous and were evidently invented in after 
years. But in telling the tale of his education and 
bringing up his biographers were on firmer grounql. 
His father had died when he was but an infant, and 
his mother was too much occupied with her lover 
and with the cares of government to pay much 
attention to him. He was handed over entirely to 
the cha'rge of a gallant Portuguese nobleman, Egas 
Moniz, the governor of Guimaraens. The young 
count showed himself an adept in all knightly 
exercises ; he became a skilful horseman and a 
fearless hunter ; and added to these accomplishments, 
a knowledge of reading and writing rarely acquired 
in those times by any but ecclesiastics. His disposi- 
tion was that of knight of the Middle Ages ; with 
the greatest personal bravery, he possessed a love for 
poetry and romance, and delighted in the tales of 
chivalry which were sung before him ; and he was 
moreover a typical Christian of the period, uniting a 
belief in superstitions, which made him a fanatic, 
with a looseness of life, when love for women or 
romantic adventure was in question, which directly 
belied his religious professions. 

His initiation into public life began at the age of 
fourteen, when he was taken by his tutor and guardian 
to Zamora to receive the honour of knighthood, 
in the cathedral from his cousin, Alfonso VII. It 
was at the feast of Pentecost, in 1125, that he thus 
devoted his life to chivalry, and he made his vows 
and watched his arms throughout the night in the 



36 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

cathedral with all the ardour of his age and tempera- 
ment. He was to fight in many a war with the 
cousin who then made him a knight ; but neither of 
them, though failing to lead moral lives, ever failed 
to acquit himself as a chivalrous knight. Affonso 
returned to Guimaraens with Egas Moniz, and many of 
the Portuguese nobility at once proposed that he should 
assume the government of his county in person and 
deprive his mother of the regency. He was trained 
to this idea by Archbishop Paio Mendes and his 
party, and when Donna Theresa and Egas Moniz 
promised for him that he would submit to Alfonso 
VII. he refused to ratify their promises, and declared 
himself of age in 1128. He speedily defeated his 
mother at the battle of S. Mamede, and then became 
the real ruler of his county. In his conduct after 
this behaviour of his ward and pupil, old Egas Moniz 
showed how fit he was to have been the tutor of a 
hero. When the old nobleman understood that 
Affonso would not make the submission to the King 
of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, which he had promised 
in the young count's name, he went to Toledo with 
his wife and children, and, surrendered himself to 
Alfonso VII. The young king honoured the old 
man's loyalty to his word, and, instead of punishing 
him, pointed him out to his courtiers as a model to 
be imitated, and said aloud, " What great things will 
not the pupil of such a noble knight be able to 
perform ! " 

The reign of Affonso Henriques may be divided 
into four clearly marked periods — the regency of 
Donna Theresa ; the wars of dismemberment, by which 



THE WARS OF AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 37 

the independence of Portugal was established ; the 
wars of acquisition against the Moors, by which the 
southern frontier of the country was extended ; and 
the period of partial decline after the defeat and 
imprisonment of the king in 1166. Of these four 
periods the first has been described, but each of the 
others deserves a close examination, for each of them 
possesses a distinct importance in Portuguese history. 
The four wars of ArTonso Henriques with Alfonso 
VII. ended in the recognition of the Portuguese hero 
as king, and in the abandonment by him of all inter- 
ference in Gallicia. The first Gallician war consisted 
of an incursion by ArTonso Henriques into Gallicia, 
in 1 1 30, the year of his mother's death, which was 
caused by the desire of the Count to punish Fernando 
Peres, who was preparing on his side an invasion ot 
Portugal. From this incursion ArTonso was recalled 
by the news that Fernando's brother, Bermudo Peres, 
who had married AfTonso's sister, and was governor 
of Viseu, was in open insurrection. ArTonso instantly 
returned, took Bermudo's castle of Seia, confiscated 
his estates, and forced him to become a monk ; and 
the Gallician party in Portugal received a blow from 
which it never recovered. In 1135 ArTonso made a 
second incursion into Gallicia, took the town of Limia, 
and built the great castle of Celmes. Alfonso VII., 
who had in this year been elected Emperor, and whose 
supremacy was acknowledged not only all over Spain, 
but in Provence as well, was not likely to brook this 
insolence on the part of the Count of Portugal, and 
speedily sent an army, which captured Celmes and 
then withdrew. ArTonso did not feel grateful for the 



38 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

leniency with which he had been treated, but in 1 137 
made a third incursion into Gallicia, at the invitation 
of Gomes Nunes of Tuy, and Rodrigo Peres of 
Limia, and utterly defeated the counts true to 
Alfonso VII. , headed by his old enemy Fernando 
Peres, and by Rodrigo Vela, in the hard-fought battle 
of Cerneja. This defeat at last roused the Emperor 
Alfonso, who came in person with a powerful army 
to punish the count, or as he now termed himself, 
the Infante of Portugal. Fortunately for Affonso the 
two armies did not come to blows ; the ecclesiastics 
on both sides argued that it was monstrous for two 
Christian princes to fight with each other instead of 
with the Moors, and by the mediation of the Arch- 
bishop of Braga and the Bishop of Oporto, on behalf 
of Affonso, and of the Bishops of Tuy, Segovia, and 
Orense for the Emperor, the Peace of Tuy was signed 
on. July 4, 1 1 37. By this peace Affonso Henriques 
promised to abandon all interference with Gallician 
affairs, and to submit himself as a vassal to the 
Emperor, and both princes swore to turn their arms 
against the Mohammedans. But the Portuguese 
prince did not abide by the terms of the Peace 
of Tuy, in so far as it made him a vassal ; and after 
winning his famous victory over the Moors at 
Ourique, in 1 139, he again invaded Gallicia, and in 
1 140 the last battle between the sons of the two 
brothers-in-arms, the French counts, Raymond and 
Henry, was fought. Affonso Henriques was wounded, 
and it was agreed, in consonance with the ideas of 
the times, to refer the great question of Portuguese 
independence to a chivalrous contest. In a great 



AFFONSO RECOGNIZED AS KING. 39 

tournament, known as the "Tourney of Valdevez," 
the Portuguese knights were entirely successful over 
those of Castile, and in consequence of their victory 
AfTonso Henriques assumed the title of King of 
Portugal. 

This is the turning-point of Portuguese history, and 
it is a curious fact that the independence of Portugal 
from Gallicia was achieved by victory in a tournament 
and not in war. Up to 11 36 AfTonso Henriques had 
styled himself Infante, in imitation of the title borne 
by his mother ; from 1136 to 1140 he styled himself 
Principe, and in 1 140 he first took the title of King. 
There is no document extant in which the Emperor 
acknowledged his cousin as a sovereign as early as 
this date, and, indeed, the agreement is only known 
as the " Truce of Valdevez," but he obviously ac- 
quiesced in it, on condition that AfTonso Henriques 
gave up all idea of interfering in Gallician politics or 
of extending his frontiers towards the north. But a 
more important consent than that of the Emperor had 
to be obtained before the Portuguese prince could 
obtain admission into the sacred circle of Christian 
kings, and this was the consent of the Pope. The 
head of the Church at this period was Innocent II., 
who was earnestly desirous of promoting the cru- 
sading spirit, and was especially grieved at the very 
existence of the Moors in Spain. He despatched 
Cardinal Guy de Vico to establish union amongst 
the Christian princes there, and the cardinal in 1143 
drew up a regular peace and treaty between the 
Emperor and AfTonso Henriques at Zamora. By 
this treaty the latter was recognized as sovereign 



40 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

monarch of Portugal, and the Emperor also granted 
to him the lordship of Astorga as a fief, in 
order that he might thus exercise some control over 
the Portuguese king. In reward for the mediation 
of the cardinal, Affonso Henriques further declared 
himself by letter to be a vassal of the Pope, and 
promised to pay four ounces of gold a year, by which 
measure he placed himself under the protection of 
the Spiritual Head of Christendom, and secured a 
guarantee for the perpetuation of his dynasty. 

Portugal was now an independent kingdom. The 
wars of dismemberment were over ; the wars of 
extension and establishment were now to take^their 
place. The next -twenty-five years of the reign of 
Affonso Henriques were spent in one long crusade 
against the Moors, and were full of incident and 
adventure. 

But before entering upon a summary description of 
these wars, which spread the fame of the Portuguese 
and of their monarch throughout Europe, something 
must be said of the Moorish wars, which were carried 
on simultaneously with the wars of dismemberment. 
These Gallician wars have been described first and by 
themselves, because of the common mistake made 
that it was by his successes against the Moors that 
Affonso Henriques won his crown. This mistake is 
of old standing ; the early Portuguese chroniclers 
always ascribed the independence of their country as 
due to the successes of their first king over the infidels, 
and it was not until the modern school of historians 
arose in Portugal, which examined documents and 
did not take the statements of their predecessors on 



MARRIAGE OF AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 41 

trust, that it was clearly pointed out that Affonso 
Henriques won his crown by his long struggle with 
his Christian cousin, and not by his exploits against 
the Moors. This fact is such an important one that 
it ranks amongst the most startling discoveries made 
by the modern scientific school of historians, and to 
bring it into clearer prominence the early years of war 
with the Moors have been purposely passed over until 
now ; although there can be no doubt that the exploits 
of the great Portuguese crusader made the Emperor 
more ready to recognize him as an independent sove- 
reign, and the Pope more anxious to comply with his 
desire to be admitted among the sovereigns of Europe. 
As a proof of his admission it may be noted here that 
Affonso Henriques married in 1 146 the 'daughter of 
a European prince, Matilda of Savoy, daughter of 
Amadeus II., Count of Savoy, Maurrienne, and 
Piedmont. 

The condition of the Moorish power in Spain had 
been particularly favourable to his early enterprises in 
Gallicia, for it had left him comparatively free from 
the fear of invasion from the south, and given him 
opportunities for winning signal victories. The wave 
of Mohammedan fanaticism, which had established 
the Almoravid dynasty in Spain and Morocco, and 
defeated the Christian chivalry at the battle of Zalaca, 
had lost its power, and the Almoravides had degene- 
rated. 1 Independent Mohammedan dynasties had 
again established themselves in the different pro- 
vinces of Spain, while in Africa, the successor of 
the Mahdi, Abd-el-Mumin, was destroying the power 

1 See " The Moors in Spain," chap. x. 




A VIEW OF THE ANCIENT MOORISH BATH AT CINTRA. 
{From Murphy's " Travels in Portugal" 1795.) 



AFFONSO AND THE MOORS. 43 

of the Almoravides with a fresh fanatical movement. 
The three independent emirs with whom the 
Portuguese had to deal were those of the Alfaghar or 
Algarves, of Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, which comprised 
Badajoz, Elvas, and Evora, and of the Belatha, which 
included the Mohammedan possessions to the north 
of the Tagus with the important cities of Lisbon, 
Santarem, and Cintra. Under these emirs were 
numerous " walis " of districts, " vezlrs " of cities, and 
" kaids " of castles, who were semi-independent ; and 
as not only the emirs, but their subordinates were 
constantly at war with each other, and could expect 
but little help from the Almoravide caliph, the 
incursions of the Portuguese were generally crowned 
with success. 

After his accession to the government, Affonso 
Henriques had chiefly left the duty of harassing the 
Moors to the Knights Templars and Knights Hospi- 
tallers, who engaged in frequent expeditions from 
their headquarters at Soure and Thomar, where they 
had been established by Donna Theresa. Busied as 
he was with his schemes for independence, Affonso 
did little to assist these knightly monks, except to 
build a great castle at Leiria, which was intended at 
once to cover his capital Coimbra, and to serve as a 
base for expeditions against Santarem and Cintra. 
The erection of this castle alarmed the Moham- 
medans of the Belatha, and caused them for a moment 
to drop their quarrels with each other. They raised 
a large army, and in 1 1 35, the very year in which the 
castle of Leiria had been built, they stormed it, killed 
the 240 knights who had been left as its garrison, and 



44 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

defeated a Christian army at Thomar. At the time 
of these disasters Affonso was in Gallicia, but when 
affairs there were temporarily settled by the Peace of 
Tuy, he prepared to undertake a great expedition 
against the Moors and gathered all the chivalry of 
Portugal to follow him. 

When he had collected his army in May, 1 139, 
he determined to do more than make one of the 
usual expeditions into the ruined and devastated 
districts of the Belatha, and to force his way to the 
south of the Tagus, and thus drive the war into 
the heart of the enemy's country. He knew that 
the opposition would not be so serious as it would 
have been in previous years, because Teshfin, the last 
Almoravide caliph, who had succeeded his father in 
1 1 37, had in 1138 taken the flower of the Moham- 
medan chivalry of Spain across the straits to Africa 
to make a last effort to subdue the growing power 
of the Almohades or followers of the Mahdi. He 
knew also that his cousin Alfonso was making his 
second incursion into the heart of Andalusia, and he 
therefore boldly crossed the Tagus and entered the 
province of Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, as the western 
portion of the old Moslem emirate of the Gharb 
was called. The emir, Ismar or Omar, tried to collect 
an army, but Affonso advanced with rapidity and 
utterly defeated him, with four of his " walis," at Orik 
or Ourique, eight leagues south of Beja, on July 25, 

1 1 39- 

This is the famous victory of Ourique, which, until 
modern investigators examined the facts, has been 
considered to have laid the foundations of the inde- 



THE BATTLE OF OURIQUE. 45 

pendence of Portugal. Chroniclers, two centuries 
after the battle solemnly asserted that five kings were 
defeated on this occasion, that two hundred thousand 
Mohammedans were slain, and that after the victory 
the Portuguese soldiers raised Affonso on their shields 
and hailed him as king. This story is absolutely 
without authority from contemporary chronicles, and 
is quite as much a fiction as the Cortes of Lamego, 
which has been invented as sitting in 1 143 and passing 
the constitutional laws, on which Vertot and other 
writers have expended so much eloquence. One 
ought, perhaps, to speak with more reverence of the 
legend which tells how Christ crucified appeared to 
Affonso in his tent, on the evening before the battle, 
and promised him the victory, even though there is no 
contemporary tradition referring to it ; because it would 
have been quite in keeping with the mysticism of the 
Middle Ages for Affonso to assert that he had seen 
such a vision in order to encourage his soldiers. This 
tradition was certainly current a century after the 
battle, and the kings of Portugal to this day bear the 
five wounds of Christ in a chief upon their coat of 
arms in memory of it. 1 These legends all deserve 
record, if only to show how great was the fame of the 
victory of Affonso, rather from his courage in pene- 
trating so far into the enemy's country than from his 
success in the battle itself. That success was a 
victory over five provincial walis in a country which 
hated the Almoravides, at a time when the flower of 

1 Some writers have ascribed the five " inescutcheons " on the shield 
of Portugal to the five Moorish kings killed at Ourique, the version 
adopted by Camoens in "The Lusiads," canto iii. stanza 53. 



46 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

the Moslem chivalry was fighting in Africa, and it 
was not by such victories, but by hard struggles with 
his Christian cousin that Affonso achieved the inde- 
pendence of his country. If any other further proof 
that the victory was not all that poets and later 
historians painted it was needed, it might be found in 
the fact that in the very next year Ismar or Omar, the 
emir who was defeated at Ourique, was able to raise 
a fresh army with which he took the castle of Leiria 
by storm. 

For many years after the recognition of Affonso's 
independence the history of his reign is filled by 
accounts of the wars against the Moors. But the 
warfare no longer comprised single expeditions, such 
as that crowned by the victory of Ourique, but steady 
persevering conquest of the Belatha. The efforts of 
the Portuguese were at first directed against cities and 
castles, and the country districts were ravaged and 
left to lie waste. The whole of the district between 
Coimbra and the Tagus was one great battle-ground, 
and "Affonso had all he could do to take and hold the 
cities, and was obliged to leave the villages in a state 
of desolation. The population of his original kingdom 
was not large enough to colonize the new conquests, 
and Affonso therefore confined his efforts to laying 
waste the fields and garrisoning the cities he took from 
the Moors with any soldiers he could manage to take 
into his pay. It must be noted that the war was 
not one of extermination ; the Mohammedan and 
Christian soldiers fought fiercely enough, but the 
Celtic inhabitants of the cities, and the large inter- 
mixture of Jews, who dwelt amongst them, passed 







ARCH OF THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO AN OLD CHAPEL AT LEIRIA. 



48 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

from the dominion of the one race to that of the 
other quietly enough. The war was a war of soldiers, 
and Affonso's difficulty was to get enough of them 
.to make a successful attempt to maintain his con- 
quests. The nobility of Portugal followed him gladly 
with their vassals, and the religious orders of knights 
repaid him by their services for the liberality with 
which Donna Theresa had received them, but neither 
of these sources of military strength were so valuable to 
him as the crusaders of northern Europe. He gained 
their assistance in two ways. Pope Innocent II. had 
declared it as praiseworthy to fight the infidels in 
Spain as in the Holy Land, and many crusaders ful- 
filled their crusading vows by coming to Portugal and 
taking service there. But most of the warriors of the 
cross preferred rather to make their way to Palestine, 
and as those from England, Flanders, and the north 
of France went round by sea, and invariably touched 
at Oporto, Affonso was able to persuade many of 
them to do a little fighting under his command 
against the Moors before proceeding to attack the 
Saracens in the Holy Land. This was what he did 
in 1 143, when, with some French crusaders, he ravaged 
the district around Lisbon. 

The history of the Portuguese conquest of the 
Belatha is of the greatest importance in itself, and it 
is noticeable that Affonso's first incursion into the 
country, held by the Moors after the signature of the 
Treaty of Zamora, took place at the invitation of a 
Moorish emir. Ahmad Ibn Kasi, Emir of Mertola, 
wrote to him in 1 144 under the name and title of Ibn 
Errik, Lord of Coimbra, and begged him to come to 



CAPTURE OF SANTAREM. 49 

his assistance against the Emir of Badajoz, But the 
Moorish soldiers of Ahmad Ibn Kasi refused to fight 
in the same ranks with the Christians, and Affonso was 
requested to retire and loaded with presents. After 
this he felt increasingly that it was more advan- 
tageous for him to conquer the neighbouring cities 
one by one than to make these distant expeditions. 
It was obvious that his first attack should be directed 
against the great and beautiful city of Santarem, 
which commanded the upper reaches of the Tagus, 
and lay at but one day's march from his capital at 
Coimbra. Abu Zekeria, the " vezir " of Santarem, 
was the most famous Mohammedan warrior in the 
Belatha, and had inflicted a signal defeat upon the 
Knights Templars at Soure, and in him Affonso had 
a worthy opponent. The only way to take his city 
was to surprise it, and for this end the Portuguese 
king made elaborate preparations. He told no one 
of his real intention, except one old soldier, Mem 
Ramires, and the first Portuguese canonized saint, St. 
Theotonio, then prior of the convent of Santa Cruz 
at Coimbra. On March 2, 1147, he led his army 
forth, and, surprising the city before its " vezir " had 
time to provision it, he laid siege for a few days, and 
on March 15th carried it by storm with but slight 
resistance from the dispirited garrison. 

This feat of arms was surpassed in the same year 
by a still greater event, the capture of Lisbon, the 
important city at the mouth of the Tagus, the future 
capital of Portugal, and the port from which the 
Portuguese ships were to sail forth on their voyages 
of discovery both to the east and the west, Affonsq 




^ 

^ 



% 



CAPTURE OF LISBON. 5 1 

Henriques had long wished to capture this great city, 
for if he possessed it as well as Santarem, he would 
be able to defend the Tagus as his southern boundary, 
and have a much better base of operations. This 
ancient city was, from its position on the Tagus, the 
natural capital of the western coast of the Iberian 
peninsula, and had been an ancient Greek colony. 
The legend that it was founded by Ulysses, who gave 
its name, Ulyssipo, afterwards corrupted into Olisipo 
and Lisbon, is an ancient one ; and it certainly held 
that name up to the time of Augustus, when a Roman 
colony was fixed there, and its name was changed to 
Felicitas Julia. Its capture by the Moors in 714 had 
marked one of their greatest stages of advance, and it 
remained the capital of their province of the Belatha 
for more than four hundred years. It had three times 
been captured by the Christians — in 792 by Alfonso 
the Chaste, of Castile ; in 85 1 by Ordonho I., of Leon ; 
and in 1093 by Alfonso VI., the father-in-law of 
Count Henry, but had only remained in their posses- 
sion twenty years after the first recapture, and only a 
few months upon the second and third occasions. On 
this occasion AfTonso hoped to be permanently suc- 
cessful, and to make it the capital of his kingdom. 

It is very doubtful if the Portuguese king would 
have entered upon this hazardous feat of arms so 
soon after his capture of Santarem, had not the news 
reached him from Oporto that a great fleet of crusaders 
had put in there, and that the Bishop of Oporto had 
persuaded the soldiers of the cross to commence their 
holy war against the infidels by assisting to take 
Lisbon before they proceeded on their way to Pales- 



52 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

tine. The bulk of these crusaders were Englishmen, 
and as a letter describing the expedition and siege by 
one of their number has lately been discovered and 
published, 1 it is possible to trace the whole history of 
this most important event in the history of Portugal. 
The fleet which had sailed from Dartmouth consisted 
of 164 ships, under several captains, of whom the most 
important were Arnold of Aerschot and Christian 
Ghistell, commanding the Germans, Flemings, and 
men of the county of Boulogne ; Hervey Glanvill, con- 
stable of the men of Norfolk and Suffolk ; Simon of 
Dover, " constable of all the ships of Kent ; " Andrew 
of London, and Saher de Arcellis. The English 
crusader tells in his letter that the proposition of the 
Bishop of Oporto was not universally well received, 
and that two " pirates," named William Vitulus and 
Ralph his brother, succeeded in leading away for a time 
the men of Hampshire, Bristol, and Hastings, whose co- 
operation was, however, soon secured by the eloquence 
of Hervey Glanvill. The northern crusaders thus 
re-united set sail for the Tagus, and having disem- 
barked at the mouth of the river, marched up to join 
Affonso and his Portuguese knights. Even with this 
large reinforcement, the King of Portugal had not 
sufficient soldiers to blockade the great city, and he 
concentrated all his efforts on one particular spot, 
where at last he forced an entrance on October 24th. 
The resistance does not seem to have been very obsti- 
nate ; the Moors of the Belatha had been dispirited 

1 Crucesignati Anglici Ephtola de Expugnatione Olisiponis, printed 
in vol. i. pp. 392, &c, of the Portugallice Monumenta ffistorica, pub- 
lished by the Academy of Lisbon. 



CONQUESTS OF AFFONSO HENRIQUES. 53 

by the capture of Santarem ; those of the provinces 
to the south were either distracted by internecine war 
or paralyzed into inaction by fear of the Almohades ; 
and AfTonso was allowed to achieve and consolidate 
his conquest. 

In addition to its intrinsic importance, the capture 
of Lisbon is worth noticing because of the assistance 
rendered to the Portuguese by the English ; it is the 
first instance of the close connection between the two 
nations, which has lasted down to the present century, 
a connection which makes the history of Portugal of 
especial interest to Englishmen. After the conquest, 
most of the crusaders sailed on their way to the 
Holy Land, but the Portuguese king, by liberal offers, 
managed to persuade a few to settle down in his 
dominions, some of whom founded great families. It 
was no wonder that Affonso was almost astounded at 
his own success. Cintra, Palmella, Mafra, and Almada 
surrendered to him without a blow in 1 147 ; Alemquer, 
Obidos, Torres Novas, and Porto de Moz in 1 148 ; and 
he found himself master of the whole of the southern 
Beira and of Estremadura. His great difficulty was 
how at the same time to occupy and settle his new pos- 
sessions, and to prepare for a further advance, and it 
was only sheer lack of men that checked his con- 
quering career. Gilbert of Hastings, an Englishman, 
whom he had made Bishop of Lisbon, went to England 
to preach the crusade in Portugal with the full consent 
of King Henry II., but he did not bring many men back 
with him, and Affonso had to wait ten years before he 
made his next decisive step in advance. He spent 
these years in strengthening the fortifications of his 



54 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

new cities, and attracting inhabitants to them from 
his older cities ; nor did he forget to show his 
gratitude to the Church, which had allowed its sworn 
soldiers to help him ; for he founded, in 1 1 53, the magni- 
ficent monastery of Alcobaca, the future resting-place 
of the kings of Portugal, and the finest specimen of 
mediaeval architecture in the whole country. All this 
time he was impatiently longing to take a step further 
in advance and to capture the wealthy city of Alcacer 
do Sal. In 11 52 he was beaten back in his first 
attack on that city ; in 1 157 he was again repulsed, 
although he had the assistance of Thierry of Alsace 
and a body of crusaders ; but at last, on June 28, 1 158, 
he was successful, and reached the height of his great- 
ness and prosperity. 

During these years, in which he had been fighting 
the Moors, Affonso Henriques had observed the terms 
of the Treaty of Zamora, and had prudently avoided 
all interference in the affairs of Spain ; but the death 
of his cousin, the Emperor Alfonso, in 1 157, which 
left him the oldest and most famous warrior in the 
peninsula, seems to have tempted him to abandon 
this prudent policy. The Emperor had divided his 
kingdoms, leaving Castile to his son Sancho, and 
Leon and Gallicia to his son Ferdinand, a division 
which also seems to have tempted Affonso to believe 
he could play a part in Spanish affairs. His alliance 
was sought on all sides, and in January, 1160, he 
betrothed his eldest daughter, Donna Matilda, to Ray- 
mond Berenger, heir to the throne of Aragon ; and a 
little later in the same year he promised his second 
daughter, Donna Urraca, to King Ferdinand ; and 



INVASION OF THE ALMOHADES. 55 

concluded the Treaty of Cella Nova, by which it was 
agreed that each monarch should prosecute his wars 
against the Moors independently, and that the course 
of the Guadiana should be the limit between their 
respective lines of conquest. This treaty was, un- 
doubtedly, caused by the fact that the Moors in 
Africa had again become united under the rule of the 
Almohade caliph, Abd-el-Mumin, and that a great 
invasion of Spain by the Mohammedans was to be 
expected. 

This invasion occurred in the very next year, 1161. 
Abd-el-Mumin crossed the straits of Gibraltar with 
eighteen thousand tried Almohade soldiers, and after 
subduing the independent Mohammedan emirs, in- 
flicted upon Afifonso Henriques his first real defeat, and 
drove him back to Lisbon and Santarem. The death of 
Abd-el-Mumin in 1163 again changed the aspect of 
affairs. A disputed succession kept the Almohade 
warriors busy in Africa, and independent bands of 
" salteadors," who were little better than brigands and 
free lances, began to establish themselves as petty 
feudal princes in the various cities and districts of the 
Alemtejo, the province south of the Tagus, which now 
became the battle-ground between the Christians and 
the Moors. Affonso Henriques let them do as they 
liked ; he had a greater ambition, and as he had for- 
merly schemed and planned to take Santarem, Lisbon, 
and Alcacer do Sal, he now cast his eyes upon the great 
city of Badajoz, although it lay upon the eastern side 
of the Guadiana which he had agreed to leave to the 
King of Leon. With this object in view he took Beja 
in 1 162, Truxillo and Evora in 1165, and Caceres in 



56 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

1 1 66, thus gradually working up to the city which he 
coveted. King Ferdinand was not the man to allow 
these breaches of treaty to pass unnoticed, and founded 
the city of Ciudad Rodrigo, to command and threaten 
the north-eastern districts of Portugal. 

But Ferdinand was at this time engaged in fighting 
his nephew, Alfonso IX. of Castile, and Affonso 
thought that he could take advantage of him. In 
1 167 he once more occupied Tuy and Limia, the 
two Gallician frontier cities, which he had formally 
surrendered by the Treaty of Zamora ; and in 1 169 he 
laid siege to Badajoz. This breach of treaty naturally 
incensed King Ferdinand, who collected a vast army, 
and besieged his father-in-law in his camp. The 
Spaniards were in every way successful ; the Portu- 
guese were everywhere defeated ; their warrior 
monarch, now in advanced years, had his leg broken, 
and was forced to capitulate. 

Ferdinand used his victory with moderation ; he 
remembered what great things Affonso had done for 
Christendom ; and after two months' captivity, he 
allowed the Portuguese king to return to his country 
on his surrendering the cities in Gallicia, and on the 
left bank of the Guadiana, which he had taken in 
violation of treaties. But the spirit of the old warrior 
was broken ; he was never again able to mount a 
horse, and about the year 1172, he associated his son 
Sancho with him in the government of Portugal, to 
whom he gave the title of King, and assigned all the 
duties of war and the leadership of the Portuguese 
armies. 

Sancho was however a mere boy at this time, 



WARS WITH THE MOORS. 57 

though he afterwards proved himself a worthy son 
of his father, and it was necessary for Affonso to take 
other measures against the Moors, who were now 
united under the Almohade caliph Yusuf. He first 
promised the Knights Templars one-third of whatever 
they might conquer in the future, if they defended 
the Alemtejo. But the Templars were too weak in 
numbers to do much, and Yusuf speedily reconquered 
the whole of the Alemtejo, and then laid siege to 
Santarem. Here however he was foiled ; the defences 
had been strengthened with all the military skill 
known in the Middle Ages, and the city was well 
provisioned. Yusuf was obliged to retire, and when 
he did so, Affonso, for the first time in his long 
career, made a truce with the infidels for seven years. 
When his son Sancho, who had in 11 74 married 
Donna Dulce, daughter of Raymond Berenger, Count 
of Barcelona, and Petronilla, Queen of Aragon, came 
to years of discretion, he broke this truce ; and in 1 176 
he made an incursion into Moorish Spain as far as 
the city of Seville, and brought back much booty with 
him. This incursion revived perpetual fighting with 
the Mohammedans, and for the next few years the 
Alemtejo once more became a great battle-ground. 
In 1 1 79, in which year Pope Alexander III. affirmed 
the independence of Portugal by a special papal bull, 
the Moors were beaten back from Abrantes ; in n 80, 
they destroyed Corruche, and in 1181 they were 
defeated at Evora. The greatest struggle was yet to 
come. In May, 11 84, Yusuf crossed the straits with 
the finest and best-equipped Moslem army the Almo- 
hades ever brought into Spain ; and in June he laid 



58 PORTUGAL BECOMES A KINGDOM. 

siege for the second time to Santarem. Pestilence 
defended the Portuguese city, and on 4th of July, 1 184, 
Sancho utterly defeated the fever-stricken army of 
the Moors in a great battle, in which Yusuf himself 
was mortally wounded. A legend runs that Affonso 
Henriques was carried in his litter at the head of 
the reinforcements, that enabled Sancho to win this 
signal victory, which, whether he himself were present 
or not, formed a worthy close to the reign of the 
great crusader-king. 

During these last years of the Moorish wars, Affonso 
preserved all the quickness of intellect, if none of the 
bodily activity of his early years, and as his son Sancho 
was always at war, he devoted himself entirely to his 
last remaining daughter, Donna Theresa. The beauty 
of this princess was sung by the troubadours in all 
the courts of Europe, and her hand in marriage 
was eagerly sought by many suitors. In 11 83, the 
old king at last accepted an offer for her, and she left 
her father and her country to marry Philip, the wealthy 
Count of Flanders. Poets and chroniclers agree in 
saying that the departure of this dear daughter broke 
the old king's heart ; he lived however to hear of, 
even if the legend be unfounded that he was not pre- 
sent at, the last great victory at Santarem, and he 
died on 6th of December of the following year, 1 185, 
at Coimbra. He was buried in the church of the 
priory of Santa Cruz, in that city of which his friend 
S. Theotonio had been prior, and his tomb has been 
rightly reverenced as that of the true founder of 
Portuguese independence. 

It is seldom the case that in one man's reign a 



IMPORTANCE OF AFFONSO'S REIGN. 59 

small inconsiderable county has grown into a powerful 
compact little kingdom, even during the Middle Ages, 
and that the new kingdom should be perpetuated to 
modern times is quite unparalleled in the history of 
Europe. This is what gives the history of the reign 
of Affonso Henriques such unusual interest and im- 
portance in general, as distinct from Portuguese, 
history. There is no geographical or ethnological 
reason why the part of the Iberian peninsula called 
Portugal should have formed an independent kingdom, 
more than Leon or Castile. It was the greatness of 
one man which made it an independent country. 
This is the first lesson taught by the Story of Portugal, 
that nations are not always marked out by natural 
geographical limits, or race divisions. The second 
lesson is, that a nation, which has thus become 
independent, may under certain circumstances develop 
a distinct individuality, which gives it a different 
character in every way to its neighbours. It has 
been shown that chance, the foresight of Donna 
Theresa and the greatness of Affonso Henriques 
made Portugal independent ; the course of the his- 
tory to be narrated will show how, while the other 
kingdoms of the peninsula coalesced into Spain, 
Portugal remained independent and developed sepa- 
rately. Spain and Portugal are now two separate 
countries with different languages, literatures, and 
national characteristics ; how they began to separate 
has been shown ; how they became finally distinct is 
now to be related. 



IV. 



PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 



SANCHO I., the Povoador or City-builder, had 
already won his reputation as a warrior in his father's 
life-time, and his fame as king rests rather on the 
success of his internal administration of his country. 
But before he had time to gratify his inclination 
towards the more peaceful duties of government, he 
had to continue the life and death struggle with the 
Moors. The great victory won the year before his 
accession, gave him a little breathing space, and in 
1 1 88 he even proposed to take part in the Third 
Crusade, for which great preparations were being 
made all over Europe. But the Moors were not 
likely to forget their repulse at Santarem, and in the 
same year Ya'kub, the son of Yusuf, the new Almo- 
hade caliph landed in the peninsula, and marched with- 
out a check until he was once more driven from before 
Santarem by the conjoined influence of pestilence 
and of the courage of the Portuguese knights. In the 
following year King Sancho took his revenge ; he 
stopped at Lisbon first an army of Dutch, Frisian, 
and Danish crusaders ; then a body of French crusaders 




* 



62 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

under Jacques d'Avesnes, Bishop of Beauvais, and the 
Count of Bar ; and finally a well-equipped force of 
Londoners, all on their way to the Holy Land — and 
with their help he not only reduced the whole of the 
Alemtejo, but even took Silves, the capital of the 
distant emirate of the Alfaghar or Algarves. Ya'kub 
was astounded at these successes. He collected a 
large Mohammedan army, and again crossed to 
Spain. But ill-luck followed his advance ; his army 
was badly equipped, and not well supplied with pro- 
visions ; he was foiled by one hundred young London 
crusaders in an attack on Silves ; he was driven back 
from Thomar, the headquarters of the Knights Tem- 
plars, by their Grand Master in Portugal, Gualdim 
Paes ; and was finally obliged to abandon the siege 
of Santarem by a pestilence, which the Portuguese 
ascribed to a visitation from God. But the great 
Almohade caliph determined to be more successful 
the next time ; he spent two years in Africa in preach- 
ing the Holy War against the Christians, and in 1192 
crossed to the peninsula with the finest Mohammedan 
army which had appeared there since the days of 
the Almoravides. King Sancho and his Portuguese 
knights had to oppose this formidable invasion un- 
aided, for the crusaders had gone on their way to 
Palestine, and were there fighting under Richard Cceur 
de Lion, and Philip Augustus of France. The Moham- 
medan soldiers advanced in a triumphal march ; 
they easily reconquered Silves and the Algarves, and 
then swept across the Alemtejo, taking in rapid suc- 
cession Beja, Alcacer do Sal, the hard-won conquest 
of Affonso Henriques, and even Palmella and Almada 



THE REIGN OF SAN C HO I. 63 

— the cities which guarded the approach to Lisbon 
from the south. Sancho, seeing that resistance was 
of no avail, was only too glad to be permitted to make 
a treaty with the Moors, which fixed the Tagus as his 
southern boundary, and the vast Mohammedan army 
turned into Andalusia and utterly defeated Alfonso 

VIII. of Castile at the battle of Alarcos in 1 195. 
King Sancho recognized the fact that the Moors, 

while united under their great Almohade caliph, were 
too powerful for him to attack, and he therefore 
turned his attention to the disputes among the 
Spanish sovereigns, and to matters of internal ad- 
ministration. It is fortunately not necessary to 
relate the history of Sancho's wars with his Christian 
neighbours. The independence of Portugal was now 
an established fact, and the minute details of the 
various wars waged up to the year 1200 have no 
especial importance or interest, except in so far as 
they contribute to a knowledge of the causes of the 
quarrel which ensued between Sancho and the Pope. 
It will be remembered that the eldest daughter of 
Affonso Henriques, Donna Urraca, had married 
Ferdinand II., King of Leon, and that she was the 
mother of Alfonso IX. This monarch had commenced 
his reign on friendly terms with Affonso Henriques, 
and his successor Sancho, and this friendliness had 
culminated in 1191, in the marriage of Alfonso 

IX. of Leon to Sancho's daughter, Donna Theresa. 
This princess, whose virtues were such that she was 
canonized as a saint in 1705, was thus first cousin 
to her husband, and as the canon law was very strict 
against such marriages, Pope Celestine III. by threats 



64 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

of excommunication and of interdict, forced her 
husband to repudiate her and to send her back to 
Portugal in 1195. This insult not only brought 
about the wars with Leon, which have been men- 
tioned, but left in the mind of King Sancho a rank- 
ling animosity against the Papacy, which found its 
outlet later in his great quarrel with Pope Innocent 
III. 

His truce with the Moors in 1 192, and his determina- 
tion to abandon all interference in Leon and Gallicia 
after 1200, left King Sancho time to attend to the 
crying wants of his people. Lie recognized clearly that 
there was no use in his pushing across the Tagus and 
conquering the Alemtejo and the Algarves, when the 
little kingdom he actually ruled was not half popu- 
lated. During his father's reign there had been 
nothing but fighting, and except in Oporto and 
Lisbon, where a flourishing trade existed, fostered by 
the frequent visits of the crusading fleets from the 
north, and in the northern provinces of the Entre 
Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, where agricul- 
ture survived, the scanty population subsisted chiefly 
on the spoils taken in the yearly invasions of Mo- 
hammedan territory. The population of the Beira 
and the northern part of Portuguese Estremadura 
lived entirely in towns, or in villages clustered round 
the castles of the nobility, and looked upon war as 
the only means for obtaining a livelihood. This 
habit of mind had made a nation of warriors, but it 
had left the land uncultivated. Tracts of wilderness 
extended between the towns and villages especially in 
the more recently conquered districts to the south of 



65 

Coimbra, and now that the truce with the Moors had 
deprived the population of their chief means of sub- 
sistence, King Sancho saw that it was necessary to 
revive the pursuit of agriculture. 

But, first of all, King Sancho devoted himself to the 
task of repairing the old city walls, and to the found a 
tion of new towns in commanding strategic positions, 
which gave him his sobriquet of " O Povoador " or 
the City-builder. This policy was dictated by the 
threatening attitude of the Moors under the Almo- 
hades ; for Sancho, like most of his contemporaries, 
could not believe that the Moslem dominion in 
the Peninsula was nearing its close, and he made 
every preparation for resisting fresh invasions. His 
first care was to see that all the walls of old cities were 
put into thorough repair by the citizens, and adequately 
manned by the city militia ; his next, to found new 
cities, which should command important roads, wher- 
ever they were not already in close proximity to power- 
ful towns. Among these new cities, his favourite, and 
the one which afterwards attained the greatest histori- 
cal importance was Guarda, which was founded to 
the westward of the threatening Spanish fortress ot 
Ciudad Rodrigo. In matters' of city government 
Sancho wisely followed the example of the Moham- 
medans in continuing the old Roman system of 
municipal administration, which left all matters ot 
internal government entirely in the hands of the 
citizens, and when he granted the lordship of a city 
to a bishop, baron, or military order, he carefully 
regulated their functions, and allowed them only to 
take a fixed share of the municipal revenue for ful- 



66 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

filling certain fixed duties, such as leading the contin- 
gent of the city in war, or holding courts of justice. 
The rural districts he treated on a different principle. 
He granted large tracts to noblemen, military orders, 
and cities on the express condition that they should 
be cultivated and populated within a fixed period 
under pain of revocation of the grants. This plan 
proved effective in the Beira and northern Estrema- 
dura, which King Sancho hoped would be sufficiently 
secured against invasion by the great fortresses on the 
Tagus, Lisbon, Santarem, and Abrantes, but was quite 
inapplicable to the Alemtejo. This province he had, 
in imitation of his father's policy, entirely portioned 
out among the great military orders before its recap- 
ture by Ya'kub. He not only confirmed his father's 
and grandmother's large grants to the Templars, 
Hospitallers, and Knights of the Sepulchre, but 
greatly increased them ; he showed especial favour 
to the Portuguese order of chivalry, the Knights of 
St. Benedict of Aviz, which Affonso Henriques had 
founded ; and he introduced from Spain the Order 
of Caceres, to which he granted Alcacer do Sal, Pal- 
mella, and Almada, and that of Calatrava, to which he 
granted Evora, Alcanede, and Jurumenha, thus attract- 
ing to his kingdom some of the most famous warriors 
of Spain. It was true that the conquests of Ya'kub 
had annulled the effect of these grants, but the knights 
looked upon their possessions across the Tagus, as only 
in the temporary occupation of the Mohammedans, and 
were inspired by this feeling into redoubled alacrity 
in guarding the line of the Tagus, and with an ardent 
desire for the war against the Moors to begin again. 



SANCHO* S QUARREL WITH THE POPE. 6j 

The latter years of Sancho's reign were signalized 
by his quarrels with his bishops and the Pope, and 
naturally enough since the Pope was Innocent III. 
This struggle bears a close resemblance to the contest 
between Henry II. of England and the Pope a few 
years before, and also possesses an importance of its 
own. The main points were that Sancho insisted 
upon priests accompanying their flocks to battle, and 
in making them amenable to the civil courts. These 
ideas seemed monstrous to Pope Innocent III., who 
sent legate after legate to demand Sancho's with- 
drawal of these claims and the payment of his tribute 
to the Holy See. But Sancho had in his chancellor, 
Juliao, a great statesman, who had been the first Portu- 
guese to study the revival of Roman law at Bologna, 
and who had learnt broad notions there as to the extent 
of the Papal authority ; and he in the king's name 
asserted the supremacy of the royal power in every- 
thing, and even his right to resume the estates held by 
the Church in Portugal. Pope Innocent declared these 
notions to be heretical, but the king supported his 
chancellor, who in return took every opportunity to 
support the royal authority. The lower clergy of 
Portugal were not unwilling to comply with their 
sovereign's demands, and the military orders stood by 
him as a valiant crusader ; his chief difficulty was with 
his bishops, and especially with the wealthiest among 
them. The bishops of Lamego, Viseu, Lisbon, and 
Guarda were all poor, the latter not even possessing a 
cathedral or a palace in his newly established see ; but 
the Archbishop of Braga, and the bishops of Oporto 
and Coimbra were ecclesiastical princes disposing of 



DEATH OF SANCHO I. 69 

vast revenues, and it was with them that King Sancho 
quarrelled. His quarrel with the Bishop of Coimbra 
is worth noting, as affording evidence of the super- 
stitious disposition of even a crusading monarch in 
those times, for it arose about a so-called witch, whom 
the king insisted on keeping in his palace. His con- 
test with Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop of Oporto, is far 
more complicated, but need not be related at length. 
It is enough to say that the bishop offended not only 
the king, but his chapter and the people of his city, 
and that he was eventually shut up in his palace and 
besieged there for five months. When he made his 
escape he fled to Rome, and Pope Innocent III. 
forthwith placed the kingdom of Portugal under an 
interdict. For a time, Sancho supported by his 
chancellor and by the inferior clergy, who refused to 
obey the interdict, paid no attention to the Pope, and 
went on building towns and castles, notably those of 
Celorico and Linhares ; but at last in 12 10, feeling that 
his health was declining and that he was about to 
die, he made his submission, received the Bishop of 
Oporto back into the kingdom, and paid the Pope one 
hundred marks of gold. He then retired to the 
convent of Alcobaca, where he died on March 26, 
121 1, leaving a reputation as a warrior and a states- 
man second only to that acquired by his father. 

Nothing proves more certainly the assured position 
attained in so short a time by the little kingdom of 
Portugal than the great marriages made by some of 
King Sancho's daughters, and the relations he entered 
into not only with the kings of Spain, but with the 
more distant princes of Christendom. It has been 



70 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

noted that one of Sancho's daughters, Donna Theresa, 
married Alfonso IX. of Leon, and was repudiated by 
the order of the Pope, because the marriage infringed 
the laws of consanguinity. The same interference 
for the same reason took place with regard to her 
sister Donna Mafalda or Matilda, who married Henry 
I. of Castile after her father's death, and was forced 
to leave him by Pope Innocent III. The beauty of the 
Portuguese princesses was so famous that their hands 
were sought by distant kings. King John of England 
sent an embassy in 1199 to ask for the hand of an 
infanta in vain ; and Sancho's youngest daughter, 
Donna Berengaria, married King VValdemar of Den- 
mark in 1213. Not less brilliant were the marriages of 
his sons. The eldest, Dom Affonso, married Donna 
Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VIII. of Castile and 
Eleanor of England, and sister of Blanche, the famous 
queen of France and the mother of Louis IX., the 
crusader-saint ; the second, Dom Pedro, married a 
daughter of the Count of Urgel, and became lord of 
Segorba ; and the third, Dom Ferdinand, married 
Joanna, Lady of Flanders, and fought at the head of 
the Flemish troops by the side of John of England 
at the battle of Bouvines. These alliances show 
how thoroughly Portugal was recognized at this 
early date as one of the kingdoms of Europe, 
although at the death of Sancho her southern boun- 
dary was the Tagus, and she had lost all the con- 
quests made by Affonso Henriques in the Alemtejo. 

The reign of Affonso II., "the Fat," is chiefly im- 
portant in the constitutional history of Portugal, and 
is only remarkable for one memorable feat of arms, 



THE REIGN OF AFFONSO II. JI 

the recapture of Alcacer do Sal. On his father's 
.death the young king, probably by the advice of the 
chancellor Juliao, summoned a " Cortes " or parlia- 
ment, consisting" of the bishops, " fidalgoes " and 
" ricos homens " of the realm, which was the first 
regular assembly of notables ever held in Portugal, for 
the Cortes of Lamego, generally asserted to have met 
in 1 143, is apocryphal. In the presence of this Cortes 
ArTonso II. gave his solemn adhesion to the final 
compact which his father had made with the Church, 
and he then propounded a law of mortmain, drawn up 
by Juliao, by which religious foundations could receive 
no more legacies of land, because they could not 
perform military service. The new king proved to 
be no such warrior as his father and grandfather had 
been, but he was very tenacious of the wealth and 
power of the Crown, and he refused to hand over to 
his brothers the large estates which King Sancho had 
bequeathed to them by his will. It was not until 
after a long civil war, in which Alfonso IX. of Leon, 
Alfonso VIII. of Castile, and Pope Innocent III. 
intervened, that he gave his sisters their legacies, at 
the same time taking care that they became nuns ; 
but his brothers were forced to become exiles, and 
never received the estates bequeathed to them at 
all. 

Though Affonso himself was no soldier, the Portu- 
guese infantry showed how free men could fight in 
the great battle of Navas de Tolosa in 12 12, in which 
Mohammed En-Nasir, the successor of Ya'kub, was 
utterly defeated ; and the Portuguese statesmen, bis- 
hops, and captains determined to take advantage of 



72 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

the weakness of the Almohades after this reverse to 
reconquer the Alemtejo. Fortunately for their 
purpose there arrived at Lisbon in July, 12 17, a great 
fleet of English, Dutch, and German ships bearing 
crusaders to the Holy Land. The leaders of the 
English crusaders were the earls of Wight and 
Holland, both friends of the exiled prince, Dom 
Ferdinand, who had fled to his aunt, Donna Theresa, 
in Flanders. Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, made an 
effort to detain this powerful army, and succeeded 
in persuading the English division to stop, though the 
eighty Frisian ships sailed away. The English knights 
and men-at-arms disembarked at Lisbon, under their 
earls, and a Portuguese army, not raised by the royal 
summons or commanded by the royal officers, was led 
by Sueiro, Bishop of Lisbon, the Abbot of Alcoba9a, 
Martinho, Commander of Palmella, and Pedro Alvitiz, 
Grand Master of the Portuguese Templars, to join 
them. The two armies formed the siege of Alcacer do 
Sal, the city which Affonso Henriques had won with so 
much difficulty, and which Sancho I. had been forced 
to surrender. The defence was most obstinate, and 
in September, 12 17, a Mohammedan army of forty 
thousand infantry and fifteen thousand cavalry came 
up to relieve the city, under the command of the 
walls of Badajoz, Seville, Jaen, Cordova, and Xeres. 
The Christian and Mohammedan armies met in 
battle on September 12th ; the latter were de- 
feated with immense loss, and were pursued by the 
Templars for three days ; the walls of Cordova 
and Jaen were killed ; and on October 18th the 
city of Alcacer do Sal surrendered, and its gallant 



DEATH OF AFFONSO II. J$ 

defender, Abu-Abdallah, in admiration of the valour 
of the Christians, consented to be baptized. 

In this expedition the king took no part ; he was 
more bent upon filling his treasury, a tendency which 
soon brought him again into conflict with the Church. 
His chancellor, Gongalo Mendes, who had inherited 
the policy of Juliao, and the chief officers of his Court, 
Pedro Annes, the Mordomo Mor or Lord Steward, 
and Martim Fernandes, the Alferes Mor or Grand 
Standard-bearer, encouraged him to lay hands on the 
great estates of Estevao Soares da Silva, the noble 
and learned Archbishop of Braga. Pope Honorius 
III. at once espoused the cause of the archbishop, 
excommunicated the king, and laid an interdict on 
the kingdom, in order to force Affonso to make resti- 
tution to the archbishop and to expel Pedro Annes 
and Goncalo Mendes from his Court. Affonso refused 
to submit, and he was still under the interdict of the 
Church when he died on the 25th of March, 1223. 
This avaricious monarch had devoted himself to 
increasing the wealth and power of the Crown ; to 
this must be attributed not only his quarrels with his 
brothers and sisters and with the Church, but the great 
constitutional measures which distinguish his reign. 
It was for this purpose that he summoned the 
first Portuguese Cortes to assent to his law of 
" mortmain," and despatched the first " inquiracao 
geral " through the kingdom to examine on oath into 
the titles of all holders of landed property by sworn 
juries of inhabitants of the vicinity, a proceeding 
exactly similar to the commissions sent by Henry II. 
to inquire into cases of " mort d'ancestor" and 



74 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

"darrein presentment." Yet the reign of this irreli- 
gious and excommunicated king was marked by a 
revival of religion in Portugal. Sueiro Gomes, one of 
the earliest followers of S. Dominic, was a Portuguese, 
and was sent by his master to found branches of the 
order of preaching friars in his native land, and though 
in every way checked by ArTonso, he made much 
progress in all the great cities and towns. Far greater 
was the success of the Franciscan friars, who were 
introduced into Portugal by Donna Sancha, one of 
the king's sisters, who had taken the veil and was 
canonized in 1705, and for whom Queen Urraca built 
two splendid convents at Lisbon and Guimaraens. 
The order took deep root, and its fame was sealed by 
the martyrdom of the five friars sent by S. Francis of 
Assisi to Morocco, whose bodies were brought to 
Portugal by Dom Ferdinand, the king's brother, and 
were buried at Santa Cruz in Coimbra, where they 
were covered by the most sacred shrine in Portugal. 

Sancho II. was only thirteen when he succeeded 
his father, and, as might have been expected during a 
minority, the turbulent nobility and intriguing bishops 
tried to undo the effect of the late king's labours to 
consolidate the royal authority. The old statesmen 
and advisers of Affonso II., Goncalo Mendes, the 
chancellor, Pedro Annes, and Vicente, Dean of 
Lisbon, saw that it was necessary to get the interdict 
removed if there was to be any peace during the 
king's minority, and prudently retired into the back- 
ground, and Sueiro Gomes, the great Bishop of 
Lisbon, came to the front, and with the help of the 
pious infantas, the king's aunts, made peace with the 



THE REIGN OF SANCHO II. 75 

Archbishop of Braga and with Pope Honorius III., 
who solemnly confirmed the crown to the boy king. 
The archbishop then became the most powerful man 
in the kingdom, and with Abril Peres, the new 
Mordomo Mor agreed with Alfonso IX. of Leon 
that the Portuguese should attack Elvas, at the same 
time that the Spaniards laid siege to Badajoz. The 
opportunity was a favourable one ; a disputed succes- 
sion had resulted in a civil war amongst the Moham- 
medans both in Spain and Morocco, and Elvas was 
stormed in 1226. At this siege the young king per- 
formed prodigies of valour, and the Portuguese 
knights and soldiers looked on him with admiration 
as a worthy successor of Afifonso Henriques. Confi- 
ding in the love and support of his people, young 
Sancho, though only seventeen, then took the reins of 
power into his own hands, and recalled his father's 
friends to power making Vicente chancellor, Pedro 
Annes Mordomo Mor, and Martim Annes Alferes 
Mor. 

This change of power greatly disconcerted the 
party of the bishops, who began to intrigue for the 
overthrow of the young king, but he wisely continued 
to occupy himself with fighting the Mohammedans, 
knowing well that no pope would dare to attack a 
crusading monarch. He tried in everything, in his 
internal administration and his crusading ardour, to 
imitate his cousin, Louis IX. of France, and this wise 
policy secured him the protection of the Pope, who, 
in 1228, sent a legate, John of Abbeville, Cardinal of 
S. Sabina, with full powers, and with orders to rebuke 
the Portuguese bishops. The legate did his best to 



76 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

settle long-standing quarrels in the Church, and 
especially that between Martinho Rodrigues, Bishop 
of Oporto, the old adversary of Sancho I., and his 
chapter, and showed his approval of the king's 
advisers by making the chancellor, Vicente, Bishop of 
Guarda. The legate also expressed his satisfaction 
at the king's favourable treatment of the friars and 
the military religious orders, and as the bishops still 
intrigued against him, he persuaded Pope Gregory IX. 
to administer a severe rebuke to them by an encyclical 
letter. The people, the friars, and especially the mili- 
tary orders, simply adored their young monarch at this 
time, and it was impossible to foresee the catastrophe 
which was to sadly terminate his reign. The most 
distinguished military orders at this time were the 
Knights Hospitallers, whose prior, Affonso Peres 
Farinha, was the greatest warrior of his time, and 
who, in 1 23 1, captured the important towns of Moura 
and Serpa ; and the knights of Santiago, whose 
valiant prior, Paio Peres Correia, in 1234, took 
Aljustrel. But the king himself was the most ardent 
crusader of them all, and his youngest brother, Dom 
Ferdinand, who from Serpa ravaged the districts held 
by the Mohammedans every year, soon won a reputa- 
tion second only to his own. In these halcyon days 
King Sancho II. imitated his grandfather in attempt- 
ing to settle and cultivate the lands of the Alemtejo, 
on the same principles that Sancho I. had acted upon 
in the Lower Beira and Estremadura, while peace 
was maintained with the neighbouring kingdom of 
Leon, where, indeed, the greatest men at this period 
were of Portuguese birth, namely, Dom Pedro, the 




GATE AND WINDOW OF THE MONASTERY OF BELEM. 



78 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

king's uncle, who was Mordomo Mor of that king- 
dom, and Martim Sanches, an illegitimate son of 
Sancho I., who was the principal general of its armies. 

Meanwhile the wise advisers of the youth of Sancho 
II. gradually died off, and his Court was thronged with 
gay young knights and troubadours, who filled him 
with conceit and encouraged him in foolish courses. 
The first result of the removal of his old counsellors 
was to be seen in a serious quarrel with the Church. 
When on the death of Sueiro Gomes, the famous 
Bishop of Lisbon, in 1237, the royal candidate was 
not elected as his successor, the king sent his brother 
Dom Ferdinand to the city, where he burnt the house 
of the opposition candidate, Joao the dean, and killed 
several priests ; and the king's uncle, Rodrigo Sanches, 
acted in much the same high-handed manner at 
Oporto. Such behaviour was not to be tolerated 
even in a crusading monarch, and a papal interdict 
was laid on the kingdom ; but prompt submission on 
the part of Sancho, and the journey of his brother, 
Dom Ferdinand, to Rome to do solemn penance for 
his misbehaviour, made atonement and the interdict 
was removed. The king then once again turned his 
arms against the Mohammedans, and invaded the 
Algarves, capturing Mertola and Ayamonte in 1239, 
Cacello in 1240, and Tavira in 1244. 

Unfortunately in the interval between these two 
last campaigns, King Sancho paid a visit to the Court 
of Castile, where he fell in love with Donna Mencia 
Lopes de Haro, the widow of a Castilian nobleman, 
Alvares Peres de Castro, whom he probably married. 
This woman became the evil genius of his life ; the 



DEPOSITION OF SANCHO II. Jg 

king grew lazy and sensual, and his Court degenerated 
into a hotbed of vice and intrigue. The connection 
was most distasteful to the people of Portugal, and 
gave an opportunity for the bishops and discontented 
feudal nobility to overthrow Sancho, whom they had 
always hated, if they could only find a leader and 
obtain the assistance of the Pope. Even his brother, 
Dom Ferdinand, deserted him in disgust, and became 
a vassal of Castile, and his worthless courtiers and 
favourites, while urging him on to despotism and 
vicious indulgences, made him more and more un- 
popular. Pope Innocent IV., who had been forced to 
fly from Rome to France by the Emperor Frederick 
II., longed to show his spiritual power over some 
monarch, and was easily persuaded by the Portuguese 
bishops that Sancho was both impious and cowardly. 
A leader was not hard to find, and in 1245, the king's 
next brother, Affonso, who had settled at the Court 
of Blanche of Castile, the mother of Louis IX., and 
who had there married the heiress to the county 
of Boulogne, offered himself to the malcontents as 
a candidate for the throne of Portugal. The Pope 
then issued a bull " Grandi non immerito," of which 
the terms were used as precedents in depositions of 
the more important monarchs in later days, and Joao 
Egas, Archbishop of Braga, Tiburcio, Bishop of Coimbra, 
and Pedro Salvadores, Bishop of Oporto, went to 
Paris and offered Affonso of Boulogne the crown of 
Portugal on certain conditions, which he accepted 
and swore to observe. Civil war had already broken 
out before the arrival of Affonso at Lisbon in 1246, 
when he declared himself Defender of the kingdom : 



80 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

Donna Mencia behaved in a most disgraceful manner 
to the king, whom she had ruined ; Sancho and the 
Castilian troops which he brought to his help were de- 
feated, and the unfortunate monarch, whose early years 
had been so full of promise, retired to Toledo where 
he died, deserted and unhappy, on January 8, 1248. 

With such a commencement it might have been 
expected that the reign of Affonso III. would have 
been a period of civil war and internal dissension, or 
at the least of complete submission to the Church and 
the feudal nobility ; but, on the contrary, it was from 
a constitutional point of view the most important of 
all the early reigns, and also that in which Portugal 
concluded its warfare with the Mohammedans in 
the Peninsula and attained its European limits. In 
short, Affonso III. proved by the events of his reign 
to be essentially a politic king, if not a high-minded 
man. On his brother's death he exchanged his title of 
" visitador " or " curador " of the realm for that of 
king, and, in order to establish his fame as a warrior 
and a crusader, he at once prepared to complete the 
conquest of the Algarves, where most of the acqui- 
sitions of Sancho II. had been lost to the Moors 
during the civil war. Aided by his uncle, Dom Pedro, 
and the Knights Hospitallers under Goncalo Peres 
Magro, he was speedily successful, taking Faro, Albu- 
feira, which he granted to the knights of Aviz, and 
Porches, which he assigned to his chancellor, Estevao 
Annes, in 1249, and Ayamonte, Cacello, and Tavira in 
1250. This extension of the Portuguese territory was 
by no means acceptable to Alfonso X. " the Wise," 
who was now king of Castile and Leon ; and after a 



REIGN OF AFFONSO III. 8 1 

short war, Affonso III. consented to marry Alfonso's 
illegitimate daughter, Donna Beatrice de Guzman, 
though the Countess of Boulogne was still alive, and 
to hold the Algarves in usufruct only. 

Affonso then turned his attention to his own 
position in Portugal, and determined to bridle the 
power of the bishops in spite of his oath at Paris. 
Perceiving that this could only be done with the 
assistance of the great body of his people, he 
summoned a great Cortes at Leiria in 1254, to which 
representatives of the cities of the kingdom were 
elected to sit with the nobles and higher clergy. 
This Cortes is of the greatest importance in the 
constitutional history of Portugal, and its composition 
shows that Affonso III. understood, like Simon de 
Montfort and Edward I. in England, that it was only 
by an alliance with the people that he could check 
the power of feudalism and sacerdotalism. His 
policy was rewarded ; the bishops recognized the 
need for submission ; and with the consent of the 
Cortes, Affonso dared the interdict laid on the 
kingdom for his second marriage, and forced the 
clergy to continue their functions. Abroad he main- 
tained peace through his alliance with Alfonso the 
Wise, and finally, on the petition of the now sub- 
missive prelates of Portugal, Pope Urban IV. 
legalized the king's second marriage and legitimated 
his son Diniz in 1262. He was everywhere honoured 
and successful, and in 1263 Alfonso X. made over 
the full sovereignty of the Algarves to him, when 
he assumed the title of King of Portugal and the 
Algarves. 




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DEATH OF AFFONSO III. 83 

The people now began to make their power felt in 
the Cortes, and Affonso soon had to pay for the 
assistance which they had previously rendered to him. 
In a full Cortes held at Coimbra in 1261, the repre- 
sentatives of the cities boldly denounced the king's 
habit of tampering with the coinage, and compelled 
his recognition of the principle that taxes were not 
levied by the inherent right of the king, but by the 
free consent of the people. As a popular king, he 
completely mastered the bishops, in spite of their 
ability and learning, and he was much aided in this 
work by the orders and regulations specially issued 
by Pedro Hispano, the great Portuguese scholar and 
theologian, who had been the king's friend when 
Archbishop of Braga, and who became a cardinal, 
and afterwards for a short time pope, as Pope John 
XXL After a prosperous and successful reign, 
Nemesis came upon Affonso III. for his behaviour 
to his brother, in the rebellion of his son Diniz in 
1277, who remained in arms until 1279, when the king 
died in a state of despair, and of misery at his son's 
ingratitude. 

During the reigns of Sancho I., Affonso II., 
Sancho II., and Affonso III., Portugal attained its 
European limits, and started on the way to become a 
great, free, and wealthy nation. The period of war 
and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now 
over, and the period of civilization was to dawn. 
Territorially and constitutionally, Portugal was now 
an established kingdom ; it remained for it to become 
civilized and thoroughly homogeneous before the 
great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic con- 



84 PORTUGAL ATTAINS ITS EUROPEAN LIMITS. 

quest should begin. The kingdom and its people 
had passed through the stage of childhood ; now 
was to come its stirring youth, in which the great 
qualities of the Portuguese were to be trained and 
developed, before the period of glorious manhood 
was to mark the height of its greatness. 




V. 

THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

No better ruler than Diniz, or Denis, could be 
found for a country which, after centuries of war, 
needed to have a period of peace and quiet. He was 
a poet, and loved literature ; he was a great adminis- 
trator, and loved justice ; he was a statesman, and 
avoided foreign wars ; he was a far-seeing man, and 
prepared for the extension of Portuguese energies 
beyond the sea by encouraging commerce ; and, 
above all, he saw the need of agriculture and of the 
arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and 
in every respect he nobly earned the sobriquet of the 
" Re Lavrador," or " Denis the Labourer." From all 
these points of view his reign is of vast importance 
in the history of Portugal, for it marks the develop- 
ment of the people into an independent nation, 
but, like all peaceful reigns of quiet progress, it is 
not signalized by many striking events. 

The civil war, which Diniz had waged with his 
father, was followed on his accession to the throne 
by a fierce struggle between Diniz and his brother 
Affonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended 



86 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

in a compromise. He then married, in 1281, Donna 
Isabel, daughter of Pedro III. of Aragon, who was 
canonized in later years for her pure and unselfish 
life. His reign is only marked by one war with 
Sancho IV. and Ferdinand IV. of Castile and Leon, 
which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, 
according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV. 
married Constance, daughter of Diniz, while Affonso, 
the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice 
of Castile, the sister of Ferdinand, but his reputation 
none the less stood very high in the peninsula, as is 
shown by his being chosen in 1304 to act as joint 
arbitrator with the King of Aragon between 
Ferdinand of Castile and his cousin, Ferdinand of 
Lacerda. Still more interesting are the king's rela- 
tions with Edward I. of England, with whom he 
exchanged many letters, chiefly on commercial 
subjects, and with whom he made a treaty of 
commerce in 1294. He had much correspondence 
also with Edward II., and in particular he agreed 
with the English king in 1311 that the Knights 
Templars had been greatly maligned. When that 
famous order was suppressed by Pope Clement V. in 
compliance with the wishes of Philip le Bel of 
France, Dom Diniz took a course which demonstrated 
his political wisdom. He recollected the great 
services which the military orders had formerly 
rendered to Portugal, and bore in mind their influ- 
ence and power, and he therefore founded the Order 
of Christ in conjunction with Pope John XXII. in 
1 3 19. and invested it with all the property of the 
Templars, thus at once obeying the Pope and avoid- 



THE REIGN OF DINIZ. 87 

ing a serious disturbance at home. He showed the 
same wisdom with regard to the knights of Santiago 
in Portugal, whom he persuaded Pope Nicholas IV. 
to release from the control of the Grand Master of the 
Order in Castile, and to establish on an independent 
footing. 

These few lines touch on every important event, in 
regard to foreign affairs, which occurred during the 
long reign of Dom Diniz, but they give no idea of the 
progress of Portugal during this period of nearly 
fifty years. Agriculture was greatly encouraged by 
the monarch, who founded agricultural schools and 
homes for farmers' orphans, and established model 
farms. He did much by showing honour to agri- 
cultural pursuits to raise them in the consideration 
of his nobility, and he attempted to wean his people 
in general from the notion that war was the only 
occupation fit for a free man. He undertook several 
important agricultural experiments himself, established 
farmers in the still barren province of the Alemtejo, 
paid special attention to the cultivation of vines in 
the north, and planted the great pine forest of Leiria 
by which he hoped to reclaim the sandy regions in 
that neighbourhood. He was also a great builder, 
and did much to improve the three royal cities of 
Lisbon, Coimbra, and Santarem, in which the Court 
used to reside, and he built the towns of Salvaterra 
and Villa Real. In administrative matters, the 
feudal system, under which the country districts 
were ruled was left almost untouched, as were the 
charters and franchises of the greater cities and 
towns, and the only important measures passed 



58 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

by the Cortes in 1286 and 1291 were still more 
stringent laws of mortmain directed against the 
Church than that passed in 1250. It was in the 
administration of justice that the greatest reforms 
were introduced. The period of great chancellors, 
who were statesmen rather than lawyers, which 
commenced with Juliao, and included Goncalo 
Mendes, Vicente, and Estevao Annes, was over, and 
a new class of chancellors was appointed. These 
men were invariably ecclesiastics, and looked forward 
to a bishopric, as the reward of their services. They 
were essentially lawyers, learned in the Roman law, 
which they had studied at Padua and Bologna ; and 
applying the maxims of their studies to the common 
law of Portugal, which was largely founded on 
Visigothic ideas, they began to build up a system 
of Portuguese law, of which the importance became 
visible later. Diniz did not venture to abolish the 
feudal courts, though he checked their abuses, and 
among other reforms, he appointed royal " corregidors" 
in every city and town belonging to the Crown in 
lordship, who were to act as judges of appeal from 
the feudal and city courts, as well as to take charge of 
the police. His wise encouragement of commerce 
appears in his commercial treaty with England, and 
by his establishment of a royal navy, commanded by 
a new official, entitled the " Almirante Mor,"'or Lord 
High Admiral, which office was first granted to a 
distinguished Genoese sailor, Emmanuel Pessanha. 

But the greatest qualification of Dom Diniz for the 
sovereignty of a country, which had at last got time 
to learn the arts of peace and to become civilized, 



DINIZ AS A POET. 89 

was his affection for literature and his encouragement 
of education. It was Diniz, who, in 1300, founded the 
first Portuguese university at Lisbon, which after 
many changes between that city and Coimbra, found 
its permanent home in the latter city, and became 
the centre of literary influence in Portugal. The 
king was also a poet of exquisite taste, and in the num- 
ber, beauty, and variety of his songs he proved himself 
the greatest poet of his Court. Educated by Aymeric 
d'Ebrard of Cahors, whom he made Bishop of Coimbra, 
he shows in his poems the influence of the troubadours, 
and not of the trouveres who had thronged his father's 
Court. He had inherited poetic feeling and power of 
expression from his father, Affonso III., who was no 
mean poet, and who is said to have written a powerful 
" sirvente " against Alfonso X., but his father had 
during his long residence at Paris been impressed with 
the poetry of northern France, and had invited trou- 
veres only to his Court. Dom Diniz, both by educa- 
tion and feeling, belonged to a different school, and 
preferred the softer themes and methods of the 
troubadours. With the Courts of Love which he 
introduced into Portugal came the substitution of the 
Limousin decasyllabic for the national octosyllabic 
metre, and the ancient forms were lost in the intricacies 
of the " ritournelle." But the best service done by 
Diniz and his poetic courtiers was in developing the 
Portuguese dialect into a beautiful and flexible 
literary language. The king went further ; as he 
grew older, he threw off the trammels of Provengal 
forms, and perceiving the beauty of his people's 
lyrics, he wrote some quaint and graceful " pasto- 



90 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

rellas " inspired by their influence, which are full of 
poetic life and truth. The effects of the influence of 
Dom Diniz, in the words of a recent writer on Por- 
tuguese literature, "pervade the whole of Portuguese 
poetry ; for not only was he in his ' pastorellas ' the 
forerunner of the great pastoral school, but by 
sanctifying to literary use the national storehouse of 
song, he perpetuated among his people, even to the 
present day, lyric forms of great beauty." x Literary 
excellence and the growth of a national poetry form 
the natural sequel of the attainment of national 
independence; and it is interesting to observe that the 
king, who peacefully consolidated the Portuguese 
kingdom, was the founder of Portuguese literature. 
Camoens happily hits off in a couple of stanzas the 
characteristics of his reign. 

" See, next that Diniz comes in whom is seen 
the ' brave Afonso's ' offspring true and digne ; 
whereby the mighty boast obscured been, 
the vaunt of lib'eral Alexander's line : 
Beneath his sceptre blooms the land serene 
(already compast golden Peace divine) 
With constitution, customs, laws and rights, 
a tranquil country's best and brightest lights. 

The first was he who made Coimbra own 

Pallas- Minerva's gen'rous exercise ; 

he called the Muses' choir from Helicon 

to tread the lea that by Mondego lies : 

Whate'er of good whilere hath Athens done, 

here proud Apollo keepeth ev'ery prize : 
Here gives he garlands wove with golden ray, 
with perfumed Nard and ever- verdant Bay." 3 



1 "Encyclopaedia Britannica," 9th edition, Article "Portugal." 

2 Camoens, "Lusiads," canto iii. stanzas 96, 97, Burton's translation. 



DEATH OF DINIZ. gl 

Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his 
poetry and his encouragement of the troubadours and 
their Courts of Love- show, the stories told of the Court 
of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some of them 
are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more 
constant love of the south instead of the airy fancies of 
Provence. Of these stories, the most romantic of all 
is perhaps that of Donna Branca or Blanche, the 
sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvao and Huelgas, 
who loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and 
was the mother of a son, Joao Nunes do Prado, who 
became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and was 
beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this 
story which has furnished the plot of one of the most 
striking of modern Portuguese dramas, Almeida-Gar- 
rett's " Donna Branca." The king's favours to his 
bastards, Joao Affonso and AfTonso Sanches, whom 
he successively made Mordomo Mor, and Pedro 
AfTonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of 
Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign 
in bitter disputes with his only legitimate son, Affonso. 
Open war at last broke out between Dom Diniz and 
his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only 
prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 
1323, and making a peace between her husband and 
her son, which lasted until the death of the great 
peace monarch, the " Re Lavrador " in 1325. 

Immediately on his accession to the throne, AfTonso 
IV., the successor of Dom Diniz, gave full vent to his 
rage against his half brothers, and with the consent 
and assistance of the nobility of Portugal, he beheaded 
Joao AfTonso and confiscated all his lands, as well as 



92 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

those of Alfonso Sanches, who had escaped to 
Castile. This act of revenge, or of justice, as he 
called it, consummated, he settled down as a worthy 
successor of his father, and fostered all the schemes 
of Diniz for the development of Portugal. He also 
continued his father's policy of peace with Castile, and 
made a formal alliance with that country in 1327 
when he married his daughter Donna Maria to 
Alfonso XI. of Castile. This marriage did not 
prove a happy one ; the king neglected his young 
wife for Leonora de Guzman, and treated her so badly 
that in 1336 Affonso IV. invaded Castile. A terrible 
war was impending, when S. Isabel once more played 
the part of peacemaker. Leaving the convent of 
Poor Clares at Coimbra, whither she had retired after 
her husband's death, she hurried to Estremoz, where 
the two armies were facing each other, and made 
peace between the opposing monarchs. Alfonso XI. 
promised to treat his wife better, and the Infant Dom 
Pedro, the only surviving son of the King of Portugal, 
was granted the hand of Constance Manuel, daughter 
of the Duke of Penafiel. The strength of the new 
alliance was soon tried ; for in 1340 Abu-1-Hasan, 
king of Morocco, crossed the straits to come to 
the help of the king of Granada, with a great 
army. Alfonso XI. sent his wife to beg for the 
assistance of the Portuguese chivalry, and Affonso 
willingly complied. In the great battle of the Salado 
on 29th of October the Moors were utterly defeated, 
and the two generals who were most conspicuous on 
the Christian side, were Affonso IV. of Portugal, who 
won the sobriquet of Affonso " the Brave," and 



FRIENDSHIP OF ENGLAND AND PORTUGAL. 93 

Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of 
Castile. This victory also marks an advance in 
Portuguese poetry, for on it was written the first Por- 
tuguese epic by Affonso Giraldes, the forerunner of 
Camoens. 

It is interesting during this reign to notice the close 
intimacy growing up between Portugal and England, 
which was to have many important results. Directly 
on his accession, Affonso IV. determined to main- 
tain the friendly relations which Diniz had com- 
menced, and in 1325 he sent an ambassador to propose 
a matrimonial alliance with the English royal family, 
probably with a view of contracting a marriage 
between his elder daughter, Donna Maria, and the 
young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. The 
English Court, then under the influence of Queen 
Isabella, replied that the ambassador was not of 
sufficiently high rank for his application to be 
received. Accordingly, in the following year, 
Affonso sent his Lord High Admiral, Dom 
Manoel Pessanha, and Dom Rodrigo Domingues 
on the same mission, but their embassy led to no 
result, probably owing to the disturbed state of 
affairs in England, and Donna Maria married, as 
has been said, the King of Castile. Friendly 
communications continued, nevertheless, between 
Portugal and England, and in 1344 Edward III. 
sent two ambassadors, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, 
and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to draw up a treaty 
of alliance with Affonso IV. This was followed 
by the mission of Andrew of Oxford, Richard of 
Saham, and Philip Borton to ask for the hand of 



94 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

Donna Leonora, the King of Portugal's younger 
daughter, for Edward, Prince of Wales, better known 
as the Black Prince. The marriage was agreed upon, 
and in 1347 Robert Stratton and Richard of Saham 
arrived to fix the day for the passage of the infanta 
to England. But at this - moment matrimonial 
alliances of more political importance occurred to each 
of the high contracting parties, and in this very year 
Donna Leonora was married to King Pedro IV. of 
Aragon, and the Black Prince to the Fair Maid of 
Kent. The rupture of this marriage scheme did not 
break the friendship of the two kings, both of whom 
perceived the wealth to be obtained for their 
countries and themselves by encouraging commerce. 
The business relations between the two nations soon 
became very close, and the wine of Portugal was 
freely exchanged for the long-cloth of England. On 
July 25, 1352, Edward III. issued a royal proclama- 
tion, ordering his subjects never to do any harm to 
the Portuguese, and on October 20, 1353, a curious 
sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was signed 
in London by Affonso Martins Alho. This young 
wine merchant had been sent to England as repre- 
sentative of the merchants of the maritime cities of 
Portugal, and the treaty he negotiated with the 
citizens of London was one guaranteeing mutual 
good faith in all matters of trade and commerce, 
with many other technical clauses referring to special 
lines of business. The very fact of this treaty or 
agreement being signed is a proof, not only of the 
close connection between Portugal and England, 
but of the high degree of wealth, intelligence, and 



THE STORY 6F INES DE CASTRO. 95 

business capacity possessed by the merchants of both 
countries. 

The later years of the reign of Affbnso IV. were 
marked by a fearful pestilence and a sad tragedy. 
In 1348 the plague, or, as it was more commonly 
called, the Black Death, reached Portugal, after tra- 
versing Europe, and more than decimated the inhabit 
tants of Lisbon. On January 7, 1355, Donna Ines de 
Castro was murdered in the streets of Coimbra. The 
history of the various dynasties of Portugal is full 
of romantic stories, some with ludicrous, and others 
with tragical, endings, which illustrate, not only the 
characters of the respective monarchs, but the 
tendencies of their different epochs. The story of 
Donna Branca, the princess who loved a carpenter, 
has been told, with the comment that her son became 
Grand Master of the wealthy Order of Calatrava; the 
romance of Dom Pedro's life ended more tragically. 
Dom Pedro was the only son of Affonso IV. and 
Beatrice of Castile who had survived his first year. 
He was born in 1320, and had married in 1336, in 
order to cement his father's alliance with Castile, the 
Donna Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of 
Penafiel. In her suite as lady-in-waiting came the 
Donna Ines de Castro, daughter of Pedro Fernandez 
de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile, and hero of the 
battle of the Salado, and sister of Alvaro Peres de 
Castro, first Constable of Portugal. Dom Pedro fell 
in love with the beautiful Castilian lady, and though, 
during his wife's lifetime, he always treated his wife with 
the utmost consideration, and was the father by her of 
Dom Ferdinand, afterwards King of Portugal, and of 




INES DE CASTRO. 



THE MURDER OF INES DE CASTRO. 9J 

Donna Maria, afterwards Queen of Aragon, it was well 
known at the Portuguese Court that the love of Dom 
Pedro's heart was centred on Donna Ines. In that dis- 
solute Court little attention was paid to the conduct 
of the prince ; princes were in those days privileged 
persons, and he was known besides to have another 
lady-love, the Donna Theresa Lourenco, who was the 
mother of Joao, afterwards King of Portugal. It was 
not until after the death of his wife that it was per- 
ceived that Dom Pedro's love for the Donna Ines was 
more than the ordinary fancy of a prince, and was an 
absorbing passion. For love of her, he refused to marry 
any of the foreign princesses proposed to him by his 
father, and it is probable that he went through a 
form of marriage with her after his first w r ife's death. 
However that may be, King Affonso determined to 
put an end to his son's infatuation by murdering the 
object of it, and by his directions Donna Ines was 
murdered in the streets of Coimbra by three courtiers, 
Alvaro Goncalves, the " Meirinho Mor " or Lord Cham- 
berlain, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. 
This is the tragedy which Camoens has celebrated in 
an immortal passage, 1 and which has since become a 
common theme for the playwrights of the world, good, 
bad, and indifferent ; and it may be said, that it is not 
so much in the murder itself, as in the events which 
followed it, that the most romantic part of the story 
is to be found. Dom Pedro was absent on his estates 
in the south when he heard of the murder of Ines. 
He at once collected his vassals, and prepared to 
attack his father, but, as had happened in the days 

1 "Lusiads," canto iii. stanzas 1 18—135. 



g8 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

of S. Isabel, the Queen, Beatrice of Castile, inter- 
posed, and a compromise was made, by which father 
and son agreed to see each other no more, and to 
abandon active hostilities, and this compact lasted 
until the death of Affonso "the Brave" in 1357. 

The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the 
throne was to punish the murderers of Ines de 
Castro, and he induced the King of Castile to 
surrender Alvaro Goncalves and Pedro Coelho to 
him. Pacheco had escaped to England, and could 
not be found, and thus escaped the fate of his 
accomplices, who were slowly tortured to death in 
front of the royal palace at Coimbra before the eyes 
of Dom Pedro. The king four years later had the 
strange ceremony performed, which is far better 
known than the circumstances of his love affair with 
Donna Ines. On April 24, 1361, either to show his 
undying affection for her, or to confirm the story of 
his marriage and legitimate his children by her, he 
had her body disinterred at Coimbra, and conveyed 
to the Convent of Alcobaca, where it was solemnly 
crowned, and then buried. It is usual to speak 
of the Convent of Algobaga as if it had been the 
burial-place of all the kings and queens of Portugal 
up to this time. Such was not the case ; only 
Affonso II. and Affonso III. and their queens were 
buried there. Count Henry and Donna Theresa had 
their last resting-place in the Cathedral of Braga, 
Affonso Henriques and Sancho I. and their queens 
in the Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, Diniz in 
the Convent of Odivelas, near Lisbon, S. Isabel in 
that of the Poor Clares at Coimbra, Affonso IV. and 



THE REIGN OF PEDRO I. gg 

his queen in Lisbon Cathedral, and Dom Pedro's wife, 
Constance Manuel, in the Convent of S. Francis at 
Santarem. 

The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had 
marked the commencement of the short reign of 
Dom Pedro continued to show itself in all matters 
of administration ; the king loved to dispense justice 
in person, and the rigour with which he treated all 
culprits, noble and priest as well as merchant and 
vagabond, won for him the title of " Pedro the 
Severe." This severity was not unpleasing to the 
people, and many tales are extant of the king's 
visits incognito to the law courts, and of his rigorous 
punishment of unjust judges. Many of the famous 
stories told in the "Arabian Nights " of the Caliph 
Harun-ar-Rashid are also told of Dom Pedro, and 
in them his Chancellor, Vasco Martins de Sousa, 
played the part of the Vizir, as companion and butt. 
In matters of policy Dom Pedro followed in his 
father's and grandfather's steps, avoiding interference 
with the other kingdoms of the peninsula, and main- 
taining a close political and commercial connection 
with England. His reign was too short to leave 
much trace on the history of Portugal, for he died in 
1367 at Estremoz, and was buried at Alcobaca by 
the side of Ines de Castro. 

The accession of Ferdinand, called " the Hand- 
some," the only son of Dom Pedro by Constance 
Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the Portu- 
guese monarchy. As a natural result of the long 
era of peace and prosperity which had succeeded the 
final conquest of the Algarves, the people of Portugal 



100 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more 
conscious of their nationality than almost any people 
in Europe while the Court had become more and 
more dissolute, and more out of consonance with the 
feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy 
was to continue to exist, it was obvious that it must 
again become a truly national monarchy, as it had 
been in the days of Affonso Henriques and of Diniz, 
which should lead the way in finding new outlets for 
the growwig energies of the people, and that the 
kings must remember their duties, and not think 
only of their pleasures. The affection the people 
showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a 
good king, but rather a despot of the Oriental type, 
was a proof that they were ready to recognize with 
gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their 
energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the 
richest nation in the peninsula, only needed to be 
directed. Neither the priesthood nor the nobility 
showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of 
the Court. The bishops lost their old commanding 
influence, as the Papacy, on which they depended, 
became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they 
had no longer wars to occupy them, either became 
courtiers and abettors of the vices of the kings and 
princes, or else lived on their feudal estates and 
imitated them. The people had now no share in the 
government. The power which the Cortes had 
obtained during the reign of Affonso III. was in abey- 
ance, because the king did not need its help against 
his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, 
and ready to spring forth again into new life. 



THE REIGN OF FERDINAND. 101 

The life and reign of Ferdinand " the Handsome " 
are marked, like those of his father, by a romantic 
amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of Ines 
de Castro, had far greater political importance. 
Ferdinand was a weak and frivolous, but ambitious, 
king, who, after binding himself to marry Leonora, 
daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised 
every one by claiming the thrones of Castile and 
Leon in 1 369, on the death of Pedro " the Cruel." This 
claim was derived through his grandmother, Beatrice 
of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand 
was favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and 
Zamora. But the majority of the Castilians, both 
noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a Portuguese 
monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the 
cause of the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as 
Henry II. of Castile and Leon. The war which 
followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian 
pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the 
intervention of Pope Gregory XL, when Ferdinand 
agreed to surrender his claim to the throne of 
Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry 
II. However, in spite of the Pope, this treaty was 
never carried out, for at the marriage of his half- 
sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and Ines 
de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King 
Ferdinand saw and fell passionately in love with 
Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter of a 
nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of Joao 
Lourenco da Cunha. Lord of Pombeiro. This 
passion was the king's ruin, for the object of it was 
a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom 



102 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

horrible stories are told, which historical research 
has unfortunately shown to be only too well founded. 
At this very period, when she first met the king, she 
made no attempt to repulse his advances, though she 
was a married woman, and she bore an undying feeling 
of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria Telles, for 
her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In 
spite of her sister's efforts, Donna Leonor managed 
to captivate the king, who, in his infatuation for her, 
and in compliance with the dictates of her ambition, 
refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. 
This refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who 
knew that the Castilians would not tamely suffer 
such an insult, and a great popular tumult and riot 
burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has 
been admirably told by the chief modern historian of 
Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in one of his his- 
torical novels, and it affords a striking example of the 
political foresight of the people, and of their conviction 
of a coming revolution. The popular leader was a tailor 
named Fernan Vasques, under whose command the 
mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain 
for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear 
to marry the Castilian infanta on the very next day. 
But Ferdinand escaped the same night to Santarem, 
and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, 
and sent all the troops he could collect to punish the 
rioters of Lisbon. They made but little resistance, 
being unprepared for their sovereign's want of faith 
to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, 
and his principal followers were beheaded. This cruel 
punishment inflicted, the king betook himself to 



THE SIEGE OF LISBON. I03 

Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at the 
Church of S. Joao do Hospital, although her first 
husband was still alive. It shows to what a depth 
of degradation the Portuguese nobles had sunk that 
all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, 
one of the king's half-brothers, acquiesced in this 
bigamous marriage, and recognized Donna Leonor 
as queen. At the head of those who submitted were 
Dom Joao or John, the elder son of the late king 
by Ines de Castro, and Dom John, known as "the 
Bastard," the Master of the Knights of Aviz, and 
the son of Pedro by Theresa Louren^o. 

The people of Lisbon were right in believing that 
the Castilians would regard the marriage of Ferdinand 
to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to their infanta. 
Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to 
Lisbon ; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at San- 
tarem with his queen, and made no effort to intervene ; 
and the war would have ended badly for Portugal, had 
not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be 
in Spain as legate, interfered, and by using all the 
authority of the Church, forced Henry II. to retire, 
and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand at 
Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of 
Castile, and after the sufferings incurred by the 
people of Lisbon during the siege, Ferdinand refused 
to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry 
II. was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 
he treacherously renewed the negotiations which he 
had entered into the year before with John of Gaunt, 
Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. 
claimed the throne of Castile for his wife Constance, 



104 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

the daughter of Pedro "the Cruel," and Ferdinand 
signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III., through 
his ambassadors, Joao Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco 
Domingues, by which he agreed to support the 
claims of the English prince. But Donna Leonor did 
not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, 
Ferdinand as usual broke his plighted word, and again 
made peace with Castile. 

The queen was now supreme ; her weak and 
vacillating husband was her slave, and the tyranny 
which she exercised was odious in the extreme. Her 
wealth was great, for the king had in his infatuation 
granted her for her own use the lordship of many 
of the most important cities belonging to the Crown, 
including Villa Vicosa, Abrantes, Almada, Cintra, Sac- 
cavern, Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Vedras, and Pinhel, 
and she had obtained great estates for her brothers, 
of whom the elder, Joao ArTonso Telles de Menezes, 
became Count of Barcellos, and the younger, Goncalo, 
Count of Neiva. Her former husband, Joao Lourenco 
da Cunha, tried to revenge himself for the loss of his 
wife by attempting to poison the king ; she at once 
had his lands confiscated, and ordered his execution, 
which he only escaped by a timely flight into Gallicia. 
Her revenge upon her sister, Maria Telles de Menezes, 
whom she had never forgiven for opposing her 
marriage with the king, was horrible in its wicked- 
ness, and affords an indisputable proof of her cruelty 
of disposition. Maria, who was as beautiful as her 
sister, and far more virtuous, had inspired a real 
passion in the bosom of Dom John, the king's half- 
brother and the elder son of Ines de Castro. The 



WICKEDNESS OF DONNA LEONOR. 105 

young couple were married in 1376, and were as 
happy as they deserved to be. Enraged at their 
happiness, and the more so, because they had a little 
son, whereas her own sons both died in childhood, the 
queen set to work, like Iago, to instil the passion of 
jealousy into the young husband. She was soon suc- 
cessful, and Dom John murdered his wife with his own 
hand, in his palace at Coimbra, while she was vainly 
protesting her innocence. When the deed was done, 
the queen came into her dead sister's presence, and 
laughingly informed the unhappy wife-murderer that 
the accusations were untrue. At this mockery, Dom 
John would have slain her, and on being prevented 
by her guards, he fled to Castile. Donna Leonor 
had not even the merit of being constant to her 
uxorious spouse, but carried on an open intrigue with 
Joao Fernandes Andeiro, the former ambassador to 
England, whom she persuaded the king to make 
Count of Ourem. Ines Affonso, the wife of Goncalo 
Vaz de Azevedo, first Grand Marshal of Portugal, 
happened to hear a declaration of love made by the 
queen to her lover, and she informed Dom John 
" the Bastard," Master of the Knights of Aviz. Some 
spy told the queen, and she determined at once to rid 
herself of the pair. She had a letter forged, pur- 
porting to be written by them to the king of Castile, 
full of treasonable passages, and on the strength of it, 
she obtained the king's order for their arrest. When 
they were safely in prison, she tried to persuade her 
husband to sign an order for their execution without 
trial. King Ferdinand, who had a real affection for 
his half-brother, refused, and Donna Leonor thereupon 



106 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

forged his signature to an order for them to be 
beheaded at once. Fortunately for Portugal, the 
governor of the Castle of Evora, where they were 
imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to obey, 
and the future saviour of Portugal escaped. 

The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted 
so long as they did to this tyranny, and it shows how 
deeply they felt the debt due to their great monarchs, 
such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they 
made no attempt to overthrow their unworthy des- 
cendant. So strong was their attachment to the 
hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at 
Leiria in 1376, the queen's only surviving child, the 
Donna Beatrice, was recognized as heiress to the 
throne. This declaration was of the greatest impor- 
tance, for it governed the future rule of succession 
in the kingdom ; and by declaring females able to 
succeed rejected the well-known Salic law, which 
prevailed in France and other countries. The queen 
steadily encouraged the king's ambition to sit upon 
the throne of Castile, and when his hopes revived, 
on the death of Henry II., she persuaded him 
once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, 
as ambassador to England. Richard II. received 
him cordially, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, 
next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by 
his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring 
military assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, 
the Earl of Cambridge arrived accordingly with two 
thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had been 
suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, 
Edward, afterwards second Duke of York, was 



DEATH OF KING FERDINAND. 107 

solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the heiress 
to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as 
usual, refused to keep faith, and terrified by the 
approach of a Castilian army, he deserted the English, 
who immediately began to ravage the country round 
their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with 
John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, 
which was signed on April 2, 1383, and in which the 
hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived, it 
was arranged that John I. should marry Donna 
Beatrice, who was but eleven years old, and that 
Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand 
died, until Beatrice's eldest son came of age. At the 
wedding, which took place at once, Ferdinand was too 
ill to be present : but the queen and her lover were 
there in his stead, and behaved with such unseemly 
hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed 
by Nuno Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in 
Portuguese history as " The Holy Constable," could 
not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six 
months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Fer- 
dinand died, and Donna Leonor assumed the regency 
in the name of her little daughter, the Queen of 
Castile. 

But she did not hold it long. The whole Portu- 
guese people detested her, and their spirit of 
nationality was outraged by the contemplated union 
of their crown with that of Castile. Dom John 
" the Bastard," the Master of the Order of Aviz 
shared both their personal hatred for the queen, who 
had tried to take his life, and their political desire for 
independence ; and on December 6th, he headed an 







S3 






DOM JOHN, DEFENDER OF THE REALM. 100. 

insurrection in Lisbon and slew the queen's lover, 
Andeiro, Count of Ourem, with his own hands in 
the palace itself. The people everywhere applauded 
his action, and attacked the friends of the queen ; 
in Lisbon the Archbishop Martinho and the Abbot 
of Guimaraens were killed upon the same day, and 
the example was followed in the provinces, where 
among other notable murders, the abbess of the 
Benedictine nuns was killed at Evora, and the Lord 
High Admiral, Lan^arote Pessanha, at Beja. Leonor 
among whose faults want of courage could not be 
reckoned, fled to Santarem, and not only summoned 
her son-in-law, John of Castile to her help, but began 
to raise an army from among the vassals of her own 
adherents. At this news, Dom John felt a momentary 
movement of weakness, and spoke of retiring to Eng- 
land, but the people of Lisbon, through the mouth 
of the popular leader, the cooper, Affonso Annes, so 
eloquently begged him not to desert them in their 
peril, but to stay and be their ruler, that he consented 
on December 16th, to remain, and named two of his 
wisest adherents, Joao das Regras and Nuno Alvares 
Pereira, to the offices of chancellor and constable. 

Dom John then took upon himself the title of 
Defender of the Realm ; but he knew how little 
chance Portugal could have against Castile without 
some powerful ally, and he therefore sent first Thomas 
Daniel and Lourenco Martins, and then his Chancellor 
and the Master of the Knights of Santiago to beg for 
help from England. The longed-for aid seemed 
tardy, and Dom John proceeded to put Lisbon in a 
state of defence, and despatched the "Holy Constable" 



IIO THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

to raise an army in the northern provinces. In 1384, 
John of Castile slowly entered Portugal with a great 
army and joined Donna Leonor at Santarem. But the 
allies soon quarrelled as to the government in future 
of the country they both believed to be already 
conquered, and Donna Leonor recommended her 
adherents to join Dom John. Not satisfied with this, 
she planned to poison her son-in-law ; but her inten- 
tion was discovered in time, and the wicked queen 
was sent by John of Castile to the convent of 
Tordesillas, in his dominions, where she ended her 
days in 1386. This act of justice done, the king of 
Castile laid siege to Lisbon. The resistance was 
worthy of the cause, which was indeed that of the 
continued existence of Portugal as an independent 
country. The priests fought at the head of their 
parishioners ; the archbishop of Braga behaved as a 
gallant knight ; and Dom John showed his fitness to 
be the monarch of a warlike people. A terrible 
pestilence, which broke out in the besiegers' camp, did 
more mischief than the bravery of the besieged, and 
John of Castile had to retire discomfited. But it 
availed little to have repulsed one Spanish army ; 
the relative sizes of Portugal and Castile, made it 
obvious that the struggle would be a severe one ; 
the independence of Portugal was at stake, and the 
Portuguese fought as men fight for their existence as 
a nation. The heroic Constable enforced the lesson 
of the successful defence of Lisbon by his defeat of 
the Castilians at Atoleiros, but it was felt to be 
necessary to take yet stronger measures, if the war 
was to end in a triumph. 



JOHN "THE BASTARD" ELECTED KING. Ill 

The first of these measures was to legalize the 
position of Dom John, the gallant leader of the 
people. A great Cortes was summoned to meet at 
Coimbra, and in it Joao das Regras declared the 
throne of Portugal to be elective on April 6, 1385. 
This proposition was agreed to by acclamation, and 
after the Chancellor had produced a Papal bull, declar- 
ing the children of Dom Pedro by Ines de Castro to 
be illegitimate, the Cortes unanimously elected Dom 
John "the Bastard," to be king of Portugal. This 
measure legalized the position of Master of the Knights 
of Aviz, who took the title of John I., and is known in 
Portuguese history as John " the Great " ; and the people 
believed the measure to have the sanction of heaven 
when the news arrived that the Holy Constable had 
won a great victory over the Spaniards at Trancoso, 
in which four hundred Castilian knights were killed. 
The spirits of the Portuguese were further raised by the 
landing of five hundred of the famous English archers, 
under the command of three squires in the service of 
John of Gaunt named Northberry, Mowbray, and 
Hentzel ; but this assistance was counterbalanced by the 
arrival of two thousand French knights, who had joined 
the king of Castile. The two armies met at Aljubarrota 
on August 14, 1385, and it was there that the inde- 
pendence of Portugal was secured, and the House of 
Aviz made good it's title to the throne. The Holy 
Constable commanded the vanguard ; Mem Rodrigues 
de Vasconcellos the right, and Antao Vasques de Al- 
mada the left ; while Dom John rode from place to 
place and never failed to be in the post of danger. 
Ten pieces of ordnance were used, this being their 



THE VICTORY OF ALjUBARROTA. 113 

first appearance in the military history of the penin- 
sula ; the English archers did yeoman service, and 
repeated the glories of Crecy and Poitiers, and after 
a hard-fought struggle the Spaniards fled in con- 
fusion. Then did John I. feel himself king indeed ; 
and he erected on the spot where his victory had 
been won, the magnificent convent of Batalha, which 
recalls in its name the famous Battle Abbey erected 
on the field of Hastings. This victory was followed 
up by another at Valverde, and then by the news that 
John of Gaunt was on his way with a powerful Eng- 
lish army. The Portuguese felt that they had anew 
achieved their independence. 

On May 9, 1386, the Treaty of Windsor was 
signed by which the kingdoms of Portugal and Eng- 
land were declared to be united henceforth in the 
closest bonds of friendship and alliance ; and it 
proved to be the corner-stone of the policy of the 
House of Aviz. On July 20, 1386, John of Gaunt 
reached Corunna with two thousand English lances 
and three thousand archers, accompanied by his wife 
Constance of Castile, and two of his daughters, 
Philippa and Catherine. He marched triumphantly 
through Gallicia; and at Oporto on February 2, 1387, 
the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was sealed by the 
marriage of King John to Philippa, the daughter of 
John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. 
This marriage was followed by another, that of 
Catherine, only child of John of Gaunt by Constance 
of Castile to Henry, Prince of the Asturias, and heir 
to the throne of Castile. These marriages settled the 
peace of the peninsula, for in concluding them, John of 



114 THE CONSOLIDATION OF PORTUGAL. 

Gaunt abandoned his claims to Castile, and insisted 
as one of the conditions, on a truce between his two 
sons-in-law. This truce continued till 141 1, when at 
last the title of John as King of Portugal was 
recognized, and peace between Castile and Portugal 
was solemnly declared. 

King John " the Great " was now firmly seated on 
his throne ; an effort of his half-brother Diniz, the 
younger son of Ines de Castro, to overthrow him 
in 1398, failed entirely, and foreign monarchs has- 
tened to recognize his power. Through this hero, 
and the race of heroes who fought under him, the 
independence of Portugal was secured, and a new 
career opened before its people. The era of con- 
solidation was over ; the era of foreign discovery and 
of Asiatic conquests was to begin. 




VI. 



PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 



The reigns of John I., surnamed "the Great," and 
of his two successors, occupy nearly a century, during 
which Portugal was learning to become the greatest 
nation in Europe. It was the age of exploration and 
discovery, during which the acutest intellects and the 
most daring natures in Portugal were dreaming of a 
new route to India, and were endeavouring to dis- 
cover it. It was an age of growth, abounding in 
statesmen, mariners, and chroniclers, who were to have 
their successors in the all too short but immortal 
period of Portuguese greatness, in such men as 
Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Camoens. The 
history of these maritime explorations and discoveries, 
of the painful and slow progress down the western 
coast of Africa, and of the great schemes and efforts 
of Prince Henry " the Navigator," will form the subject 
of a separate chapter ; but it is first expedient to study 
the history of the Portuguese people and monarchy 
at home during this period, and to see how, from the 
reign of John I., a new spirit appeared alike among 



Il6 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

the kings, and the merchants, and the soldiers, which 
was to culminate in the glories of the heroic age. 

King John, after the victory of Aljubarrota had 
firmly seated him on the throne, felt it necessary to 
give Portugal such an interval of peace after the great 
efforts of the Castilian wars, as King Diniz had given 
it after the cessation of the wars against the Moors. 
This peace was secured by a wise foreign policy, of 




KING JOHN THE GREAT. 

( From his recumbent stattie over his tomb at Batalha. ) 

which the key-notes were, a close alliance with 
England, and systematic non-interference with the 
affairs of Spain. He had seen the value of the assist- 
ance of England in the final throes of his struggle 
with Castile, and the English monarchs on their side 
felt the advantage of having such an ally as Portugal 
to act as a thorn in the side of Castile, should the 
Spaniards come to the help of the French. The 



THE ALLIANCE WITH ENGLAND. 1 17 

statesmanlike idea of Henry II. of England when 
he supported the proposal of the Count of Flanders 
for the hand of the daughter of Affonso Henriques, 
that this marriage should cement an unwritten 
alliance of England, Flanders, and Portugal, against 
France, Scotland, and Castile, seems to have been 
in the minds of the English statesmen of the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries. Just as Scotland 
afforded a convenient base of operations, whether 
military or political, for France against England, so 
did Portugal give a similar position for the English 
to act from against Castile, and the subsequent 
history of Portugal shows how generously and wisely 
England treated her southern ally. The people of 
the two nations gladly supported the political ideas 
of their monarchs and rulers. Each country could 
supply what the other wanted. From Portugal, the 
English merchants could obtain fruits and wines, 
which found a ready market, and the Londoners, 
not satisfied with supplying the home demand only, 
distributed these products of the south among the 
countries of the north, and notably in those lying 
round the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, Pomerania, 
and Lithuania. On the other hand, the Portuguese 
had no manufactures, and gladly took in exchange 
for the productions of their fertile soil, the cloth not 
only of the English looms, but of those of Flanders, 
in which the London merchants dealt. 

This alliance was maintained in spite of dynastic 
changes and political revolutions in the two countries. 
In 1389 the name of the King of Portugal was intro- 
duced into the Treaty of Paris as an ally of the King 



Il8 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

of England ; in 1398 Richard II. sent a body of 
English archers, under Edmund Arnold of Dart- 
mouth, to assist in repelling the incursion made into 
Portugal by the son of Ines de Castro and some 
Spanish knights ; and in 1400 John I. recognized his 
brother-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, as Henry IV. of 
England, and was created by him a Knight of the 
Garter, being the first foreign sovereign to receive 
that honour. In 1403 Henry IV. solemnly ratified 
the Treaty of Windsor, and in the following year the 
illegitimate daughter of John I., by Ines Pires, was 
promised in marriage to Thomas, Earl of Arundel, 
one of the leaders of the English nobility. This 
marriage was regarded as a further bond of alliance, 
and was celebrated in 1405 in England with the 
greatest splendour. Equally friendly relations were 
maintained with Henry V. and with the rulers of 
England during the minority of Henry VI. ; Henry 
V. sent provisions and troops for the expedition to 
Ceuta in 141 5, and in 1428 a strong force of 144 
lances was sent to join the King of Portugal. This 
English alliance was the key-note of the policy of 
John I., and it was maintained without a breach 
from the arrival of John of Gaunt in 1386 until 
the death of the great Portuguese monarch in 1433. 
The internal government of King John I. was 
hampered in one respect to such an extent as to 
vitiate the effect of his great administrative reforms. 
It will be remembered that he was elected to the 
crown by the Cortes, and followed to the field of 
Aljubarrota by all classes of the Portuguese people. 
Yet for some reason he would not trust in the people 



THE REIGN OF JOHN I. 119 

who loved him, but believing he owed his success 
to the nobles who had supported him, he began his 
reign by making extensive grants of lands and 
privileges to his principal supporters of noble birth. 
It would perhaps be too much to expect the political 
knowledge of a statesman in the nineteenth century 
from a king in the fourteenth, but it seems to posterity 
that King John greatly over-estimated the assistance 
of his nobles, and that he over-rewarded them by 
granting them nearly the whole of the old royal 
estates of the kings of Portugal. It may be believed 
that he feared the secession of his nobles to the 
Castilian party, and that he thought they could 
take their vassals with them, but whatever may have 
been the reason, he gave them such enormous grants 
as to seriously weaken the royal power. These grants 
however did not impoverish the treasury, which was 
filled more by the proceeds of the customs duties, a f 
source of income, which his wise commercial policy 
increased, than by rents from landed estates. So 
wealthy did he become that he left his mark on 
the country in his great buildings ; besides the mag- 
nificent convent of Batalha on the field of Alju- 
barrota, he constructed no less than four palaces at 
Cintra, Almeirim, Cezimbra, and Lisbon. The last- 
mentioned city was his favourite place of residence ; 
under his fostering care it became the official capital 
of Portugal instead of Coimbra, and soon surpassed 
the wealth of Oporto as a commercial city. The 
citizens of Lisbon regarded him much as the citizens 
of London did Edward IV. a century later ; they 
never forgot his gallant conduct in the great siege, 



120 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

and were at all times ready to obey him and to pay 
him a fair tithe of their wealth. In one respect 
especially did King John gratify the aspirations of the 
religious section of the people of Lisbon, by obtaining 
the sanction of the Pope to erect the bishopric of 
Lisbon into an archbishopric. 

It is not to be wondered at that King John loved 
to live in Lisbon, and watch the daily passage up 
and down the Tagus of the ships, which were making 
his capital a great commercial centre, when it is 
remembered how slight was his actual power over the 
greater part of his kingdom. The other cities were 
indeed fairly well governed owing to their possession 
of ancient charters from kings, bishops, or lords, 
granting them a system of municipal self-government, 
but the country districts were ruled by the strictest 
feudal law and custom, and the king was powerless to 
interfere. Now was to be seen the harm done by the 
monarchs who had conquered the Alemtejo and the 
Algarves from the Mohammedans by the distribution 
of their conquests in estates among the military orders 
and private individuals. The result was the division 
of these provinces into enormous feudal counties and 
lordships, dangerously large to be the properties of 
subjects in such a small kingdom as Portugal. The 
condition of the Beira was a little better, and the two 
northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and 
the Tras-os-Montes, were, as they are still, the homes 
of the sturdy Portuguese peasantry, who gave to 
the Portuguese armies and fleets their bravest and 
stoutest soldiers and sailors. Bitterly did John the 
Great repent the mistake he had made by his large 



THE REFORMS OF JOHN I. 121 

grants to the Portuguese nobility, and his conse- 
quent inability to correct the most crying evils of 
the feudal system. He had, however, at the begin- 
ning of his reign, some wise and able counsellors, in 
the Holy Constable, in Lourenco, the brave Arch- 
bishop of Braga, and in his great chancellor, Joao das 
Regras. With the help of the latter he managed to 
get some valuable laws passed in the Cortes affecting 
criminal procedure and jurisdiction, by means of which 
he somewhat controlled the feudal methods of hold- 
ing courts of justice without much offending the great 
nobility, but he dared go no further in this direction, 
and had to allow many abuses, inherent in the feudal 
system, to continue to exist. In every other respect 
his administration was extremely good ; his cities grew 
in wealth ; his navy increased in number of ships ; 
his sailors became famous for their daring ; and in 
minor points many reforms were made, such, for 
instance, as introducing the use of the Portuguese 
language into the law courts, and changing the era 
from that of Augustus to that of Christ, which made 
the date of the year consonant with that of the rest 
of Christendom. 

In such labours passed the first thirty years after 
the battle of Aljubarrota, and Portugal and its great 
king became renowned throughout Europe. During 
this period, a new generation grew up, the sons of the 
men of Aljubarrota and Trancoso, and the young 
nobility burned to prove themselves worthy sons of 
their brave fathers. In their aspirations they were 
headed by the princes of Portugal. The union of the 
old royal family of Portugal as represented by King 



122 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

John, with the blood of the English Plantagenets in 
the person of his queen, Philippa of Lancaster, pro- 
duced the five famous princes, whose names stand 
out conspicuously in the history of the fifteenth 
century. The three elder sons of John and Philippa, 
Dom Duarte or Edward, Dom Pedro, and Dom 
Henry, were in 1414 respectively 23, 22, and 20 years 
of age ; they longed to win their knightly spurs, and 
to show themselves worthy cousins of Henry V. of 
England. The King of Portugal did not wish to 
check their ardour ; he felt the need of occupying 
the energies of his youthful nobility ; and as there 
were no enemies at home, he acquiesced in the desire 
of his sons to attack the old enemies of Portugal, the 
Moors, in Morocco. By such an expedition against 
the Mohammedans the young princes would show 
themselves crusaders, and would find adversaries 
worthy of their swords, without arousing the jealous 
watchfulness of the King of Castile. Ceuta was the 
city of Africa selected for attack, not only because it 
was the chief port of the Moors in the north-western 
corner of Africa and threatened the south of Spain, 
but also because it was the headquarters of the 
numerous corsairs and pirates, who preyed upon the 
already growing traffic of Portugal with the west 
coast of Africa, and at times made descents upon the 
Portuguese province of the Algarves. The expedition 
sailed from Lisbon in 141 5 ; the three princes were 
followed by the flower of the Portuguese chivalry, and 
accompanied by their two boy brothers, Dom John, 
who was but fifteen, and Dom Ferdinand not yet 
thirteen ; from her deathbed the Queen sent her 



s 

THE CAPTURE OF CEUTA. 12$ 

blessing, and in the month of June the expedition 
safely disembarked on the African coast. The Moors 
fought bravely on their native soil, and it was not 
until 24th of August that the city of Ceuta was 
stormed, after a siege, in which the sons of John the 
Great showed themselves to be gallant soldiers and 
prudent leaders. This conquest was of importance 
in two ways ; it was the first conquest made by the 




QUEEN PHILIPPA. 

{From her recumbent statue over the tomb at Bat a/ha.) 

Portuguese outside the limits of their own country, 
and was therefore a proof of their energy and the 
expansion of their power ; but, on the other hand, it 
pointed in a false direction, and was the first of a 
series of African expeditions, which were not profitable 
to the country, even when successful, and which 
terminated in the great disaster associated with the 
name of Dom Sebastian. 



124 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

The conquest of Ceuta completed, the elder princes 
devoted their extraordinary powers of mind and body 
to pursuits worthy of the cousins of Henry V. of 
England. Dom Edward, so named after his great- 
grandfather, Edward III. of England, the eldest son, 
married Donna Leonora of Aragon, and helped his 
father in the duties of government. He proved an 
apt pupil of Joao das Regras, the chancellor, and, 
after devoting much time to legal studies, he drew up 
the first code of Portuguese law. Dom Pedro, the 
next brother, who was created by his father Duke of 
Coimbra after the storming of Ceuta, travelled all 
over Europe, enjoying in turn the hospitality of 
Henry V. of England, of the Emperor, and of the 
Pope, and astonishing those monarchs by his abilities. 
He proved his valour by fighting beside the Teutonic 
knights against the Lithuanians, in the extreme east 
of civilised Europe, and his literary taste by his en- 
lightened patronage of men of letters in all parts of 
the continent. In 1428 he ended his travels, and 
settling at Lisbon, he married Donna Isabel, the 
daughter of the Count of Urgel, and assisted his 
father and elder brother in the duties of government, 
taking special interest in the progress of literature, 
and co-operating in all the various schemes for the 
development of Portugal. The third brother, Dom 
Henry, created by his father, Duke of Viseu, and 
appointed Master of the Order of Christ, and governor 
of the kingdom of the Algarves, has left his mark 
on the history of the world as Prince Henry " the 
Navigator." This prince refused all the offers of the 
Pope, the Emperor, and of Henry V., to visit their 



THE CHILDREN OF JOHN THE GREAT. 1 25 

courts, and established himself in 141 8 at Sagre in 
order to devote himself and his wealth to the cause 
of discovering a continuous route by sea to India, 
which should bring the trade of Asia and its profits 
to the Portuguese. His efforts and the discoveries 
he superintended form the subject of a separate 
chapter, but it must be remembered that in all his 
efforts he was seconded by his father and elder 
brothers. The fourth brother, Dom John, Master of 
the Order of Santiago, married his niece Isabel, 
daughter of the Count of Barcellos, and became 
eventually third Constable of Portugal. The fifth 
brother, Dom Ferdinand, who earned the title of the 
" Constant Prince " in after years, was Master of the 
Order of S. Benedict of Aviz, as his father had been 
before his elevation to the throne ; his piety was so 
well known, that he was requested to enter the Church, 
and promised a cardinal's hat by the Pope, but he 
refused the honour, longing rather for the glory of a 
crusader than the influence of an ecclesiastic, and 
winning in the end a martyr's crown. Their sister, 
Isabel, was as famous for her beauty, as her brothers 
for their valour, wisdom, and piety, and was married 
to Philip " the Good " of Burgundy, the founder of the 
Order of the Golden Fleece. To mar the unity of 
this illustrious and gifted family, there existed a half 
brother Afifonso, the son of King John by Ines Pires, 
born before the marriage witfi Philippa of Lancaster, 
who was jealous of his legitimate brothers, and ulti- 
mately proved the evil genius of their destiny. This 
son was regarded with special favour by his father, 
who brought about his marriage with Donna Beatrice 



126 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

Pereira, daughter and heiress of the Holy Constable, 
and created him Count of Barcellos. 

The latter years of King John " the Great 's " fortunate 
reign of nearly half a century were marked not only 
by the discoveries of Prince Henry " the Navigator," 
but by the development of Portuguese into a literary 
language by many talented authors. Mention has been 
made of the poetry of the Portuguese troubadours, who 
sang in the reign of Diniz, and of the first Portuguese 
epic on the battle of the Sal ado, which foreshadowed 
the " Lusiads " of Camoens. But a literary language 
is formed not so much by its poetry as by its prose ; 
the early poetry of Portugal differed but little from that 
of Gallicia, while its prose developed in an indepen- 
dent direction. The first Portuguese prose work of any 
length or importance was the famous romance of 
" Amadis de Gaul," written by Vasco de Lobeira, who 
died in 1403. This romance gave rise to a host of 
imitations, and the taste for romances was further 
developed by the popularity of the " Prophecies of 
Merlin," and the Arthurian tales, the knowledge of 
which came into Portugal with the English alliance. 
The king himself encouraged this literary revival ; 
the " Book of the Chase," one of the best specimens 
of early Portuguese prose was written for him under 
his superintendence, and among his sons, Dom Pedro 
wrote poems, and Dom Edward two excellent prose 
works, " Instructions in Horsemanship " and " The 
Faithful Councillor." More important to notice are 
the works of the first great Portuguese chroniclers. 
Chronicles of early events in Portuguese history had 
been written in monasteries, and have a value of their 



EARLY PORTUGUESE CHRONICLERS. 1 27 

own, but these works are little better than annals 
noted down year by year with no pretence to literary 
form. Next in order stands the anonymous 
" Chronica da Conquista do Algarves," which re- 
presents the transition from the annalist to the 
chronicler, and in the reign of John I., under the 
special patronage of the monarch and his sons, the 
first great Portuguese chronicler, Fernan Lopes, who 
has been called the Froissart of Portugal, wrote his 
chronicles of the reigns of Pedro " the Severe " and 
Ferdinand " the Handsome," and Matthew de Pisano, 
wrote his " Guerra de Ceuta," a history of the famous 
expedition of 141 5. These men were the fore- 
runners of the great chroniclers of the fifteenth 
century, Azurara, Ruy de Pina, and Duarte Galvao. 

After a reign, which ranks among the most glorious 
in Portuguese history, made famous by maritime 
discoveries and literary advancement, leaving behind 
him sons worthy and able to guide the people along 
the road of civilization to wealth and prosperity, 
John L, rightly surnamed "the Great," died at his 
palace at Lisbon on August 14, 1433, having sur- 
vived his wife Philippa of Lancaster nearly twenty 
years. 

Contrary to the expectation of his subjects, the 
reign of King Edward was but short, and it is marked 
only by a signal disaster. His own great qualities, 
and the promise he had given of being both a good 
and a great king when assisting his father, combined 
to raise the highest hopes, which were destined to 
be cruelly shattered. On ascending the throne he 
believed himself strong enough to take a step, in- 



128 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

tended to check the perpetuation of power in the 
hands of the feudal nobility, which had often been 
discussed between his father, his brother Dom Pedro, 
Joao das Regras, and himself, and in 1434 he 
summoned a full Cortes at Evora. He there pro- 
pounded the " Lei Mental " or the provision, which 
was assumed to have been in the mind of King John 
when he made his extensive grants of land to the 
nobility, namely, that they could only descend in the 
direct male line of the original grantee, and should 
revert to the Crown on failure of such heirs. The 
law was carried by the influence of the king's 
brothers, in spite of the natural opposition of the 
nobility, who never forgave the supporters of the 
measure. In other matters Edward simply followed 
the example of his father. He continued the English 
alliance, ratified the treaty of Windsor, and was made 
a Knight of the Garter in his father's room ; he 
maintained an attitude of prudent neutrality towards 
Castile ; he encouraged the literary movement, 
represented by Fernan Lopes, and took an intelligent 
interest in the schemes and plans of his brother, 
Dom Henry. 

But, unfortunately, the king's life was shortened 
and Dom Henry's explorations checked for a time 
by the fatal expedition to Tangier in 1437. This 
expedition was the natural sequel of the expedition 
to Ceuta, and was undertaken in opposition to the 
advice of the Pope, and of Dom Pedro. It was 
entirely the result of the earnest solicitations of the 
king's favourite brother, Dom Ferdinand. This 
pious young prince burned with crusading ardour ; 



THE EXPEDITION AGAINST TANGIER. 120. 

his one longing in life was to fight the infidels, and 
he could not appreciate the fact that Dom Henry was 
doing far greater work for the world in exploring the 
coast of Africa, than in killing Mohammedans. The 
ardour of Dom Ferdinand won the day, and King 
Edward collected a fleet and army in the Tagus, 
and sailed for the coast of Africa. The object of 
the attack was Tangier and it was most foolishly 
chosen. Ceuta was on the sea coast, and the 
Portuguese soldiers could use their fleet as a base of 
operations, and could retreat to it in case of need ; 
whereas Tangier was three miles from the coast. As 
might have been foretold, when King Edward with 
his eight thousand Portuguese soldiers formed the 
siege of Tangier, the Moors at once cut off his 
communications with the fleet, and in three days the 
Portuguese army was reduced to extremities. It was 
only by Dom Ferdinand's willing sacrifice of himself 
as a hostage, that the troops were allowed to return 
to their ships and find their way back to Lisbon. 
This disaster and the captivity of his favourite 
brother so preyed upon King Edward's mind that 
he died in 1438. His death was happier than that 
of Dom Ferdinand, who, after a long and cruel im- 
prisonment, borne with such heroic patience and 
exemplary piety, as to win for him the title of 
" the Constant Prince," died at Fez in 1443. 

The noble conduct of Dom Ferdinand, who 
preferred death in captivity to safety purchased by the 
surrender of Ceuta, the only alternative which the 
Moors would accept, has its place also in the great 
epic, in which all noble deeds of Portuguese heroes 



130 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

are commemorated. Speaking of King Edward, 
Camoens says : 

" Captive he saw his brother, hight Fernand, 
the Saint, aspiring high with purpose brave, 
who as a hostage in the Sara'cen's hand, 
betrayed himself his 'leaguer'd host to save. 
He lived for purest faith to Fatherland 
the life of noble Ladye sold a slave, 

lest bought with price of Ceita's potent town 

to publick welfare be preferred his own. 

Codrus, lest fcemen conquer, freely chose 

to yield his life and, conqu'ering self, to die ; 

Regulus, lest his hand in ought should lose, 

lost for all time all hopes of liberty ; 

this, that Hispania might in peace repose, 

chose lifelong thrall, eterne captivity ; 
Codrus nor Curtius with man's awe for meed, 
nor loyal Decii ever dared such deed." * 

The successor of King Edward, his eldest son, 
Affonso V., afterwards called "the African," was only 
six years old when he ascended the throne, and his 
reign commenced with a dispute as to the regency. 
By his will, Edward had left the regency to his wife, 
Leonora of Aragon, but this arrangement was not 
at all satisfactory to the people, and a great 
Cortes at Torres Novas set aside the will, and 
appointed Dom Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, to be 
"defender" of the realm with all the duties of 
government, the Count of Arrayolos, minister of 
justice, and Queen Leonora, guardian of her son, the 
young king, with a large allowance. This arrange- 
ment shows how great the powers of the Cortes had 

1 Camoens, " Lusiads," canto iv. stanzas 52, 53 — Burton's transla- 
tion. 



REGENCY OF THE DUKE OF COIMBRA. 131 

become, and a still more important testimony to their 
recognized influence appears in the motion by Dom 
Henry, that three members of the Cortes should be 
annually elected to reside at the seat of government 
during the months in which the Cortes was not in 
session. This arrangement was highly unsatisfactory 
to the queen, who had expected to be sole regent 
under the terms of King Edward's will, and, assisted 
by the discontented nobility, headed by the Count 
of Barcellos and the Archbishop of Lisbon, she 
attacked Dom Pedro, and endeavoured by force to 
overthrow the arrangements made by the Cortes of 
Torres Novas. The struggle was but a short one ; 
the people of Lisbon rose en masse to support the 
son of their favourite monarch, John I., in whom 
they perceived his father's administrative ability and 
love for commerce, and the queen and archbishop were 
forced to go into exile. The result of this move- 
ment was to seat Dom Pedro firmly in power with 
the title of regent and the guardianship of the boy- 
king. 

The regency of Dom Pedro, better known by his 
title of Duke of Coimbra, is marked by the same 
features as the reign of his brother Edward ; in it 
appears the same consistent attempt to check the 
power of the feudal nobility and the same wise 
encouragement of commerce. His foreign policy 
followed the same lines, and he maintained the 
same neutrality with regard to Spain and the same 
close alliance with England. In 1439 the regent 
solemnly confirmed the Treaty of Windsor in the 
young king's name, and was made a Knight of the 



132 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

Garter, and the same honour was conferred upon 
Dom Henry, Duke of Viseu, in 1444, and on Dom 
Alvaro Vaz de Almada, Lord High Admiral of 
Portugal and Count of Arronches, in 1445. Dom 
Pedro also encouraged the maritime explorations of 
Dom Henry and the literary revival, which were 
making the name of Portugal renowned throughout 
Europe, and his power seemed to be at its height, 
when, in 1447, his daughter Isabel was married to her 
cousin, the king, Affonso V. 

But the great regent counted without the enmity 
of the feudal nobility, headed by his own half-brother, 
the Count of Barcellos, who was created by the 
young king Duke of Braganza. This nobleman had 
always been jealous of the legitimate sons of John I., 
and in spite of the kind treatment of Dom Pedro, he 
hated the regent. This hatred he instilled into the 
mind of Affonso V., who was rather restive under his 
uncle's control, and he eventually persuaded the 
young king that his uncle and father-in-law had 
poisoned both -iiis father, King Edward, and his 
mother, Donna Leonora. Affonso V. believed these 
libels, and ordered the great regent to leave the 
Court. Dom Pedro obeyed ; but the vengeance of 
the Duke of Braganza was not yet satisfied, and he 
gladly led an army to arrest the Duke of Coimbra 
on his estates. Dom Pedro, deserted by all his old 
friends and sycophants, except the Lord High 
Admiral, yet determined to fight, and he defeated 
the Duke of Braganza at Penella. Affonso V. then 
declared his former guardian a traitor, and sum- 
moned the feudal nobility to his side. The nobles 



THE REIGN OF AFFONSO 7. I33 

were only too happy to aid him, and in the hotly- 
contested battle of Alfarrobeira the friends of the 
regent were defeated, and Dom Pedro, Dom Jayme, 
his only son, and the Lord High Admiral, were slain, 
on May 21, 1449. 

Affonso V., at the beginning of his personal 
government, yielded to the influence of the Duke of 
Braganza and his sons, who humoured his desire for 
knightly fame and his dream of sitting on the throne 
of Castile, and who obtained vast grants of royal 
property for themselves. Among them they secured 
the lordships of the old royal city of Guimaraens, the 
birthplace of Affonso Henriques, and even of Oporto, 
the second city of the kingdom ; but they never got 
possession of the latter, owing to the fierce resist- 
ance of the citizens. The young king's main idea 
at this time was to win fame as a knight and a 
crusader, and unfortunately this whim led him towards 
the country which was to be the tomb of his dynasty. 
It was to raise funds for the expeditions which won 
him the title of "the African" that Affonso first 
issued the beautiful coins known as crusados, and 
with money raised by this means he paid the ex- 
penses of his three expeditions. In the first of 
these adventures, in 1458, he took Alcazar es Seghir, 
or Alcacer Seguier ; in the second, in 1464, he failed ; 
and in the third, in 147 1, he took Anafe, Tangier, 
and Arzila. It was in these expeditions that he use- 
lessly exhausted the strength of his people, but 
nevertheless the works of maritime exploration went 
on apace, though with less energy after the death of 
Dom Henry " the Navigator" in 1460. 



134 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

From wasting the power of his kingdom in African 
wars Affonso V. turned to a still more fatal pursuit, the 
encouragement of his dream of sitting on the throne 
of Castile. The lessons of his grandfather's reign were 
lost on him ; he failed to understand that the two 
countries had developed on separate lines and could 
not coalesce, and did not see that in a contest 
Portugal, owing to her smaller population, must needs 
have the worst of it, unless the war were national 
and calculated to rouse the spirit of enthusiasm and 
not merely dynastic. His family was now at the 
height of its fame—his aunt Isabel was Duchess of 
Burgundy \ his eldest sister had married the Emperor 
Frederick III. ; his youngest sister had married Henry 
IV. of Castile ; and his remaining sister, Catherine, 
had been sought in marriage by the son of the King 
of Aragon and by Edward IV. of England. His 
first wife, Isabel, the daughter of the great regent, 
Dom Pedro, had died in 1455, after giving birth to 
the prince who was to be John II., and it was not 
until after his third expedition to Africa that he 
contemplated a fresh marriage, which should give 
him a claim to the succession to the throne of Castile. 

With this idea Affonso V. married his own niece, 
Joanna, elder daughter of Henry IV. of Castile 
(though but a girl of thirteen), in 1475, and he claimed 
the kingdom of Castile in her name. But the 
Castilians preferred the Infanta Isabella, who had 
married Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and they were 
as determined to prevent a Portuguese king from 
sitting upon their throne, as the century before the 
Portuguese had been against the union of their 



DEATH OF AFFONSO V. I35 

country with Castile. The Castilians, fighting for 
their independence, as utterly defeated the Portu- 
guese at Toro in 1476 as the Portuguese had de- 
feated them at Aljubarrota in 1385. AfTonso hurried 
to France, to beg help from Louis XL ; but his 
supplication was unheeded, and in 1478 he found 
himself constrained to sign the Treaty of Alcantara, 
by which he agreed to send his newly-married bride 
to a convent. He remained inconsolable at this failure 
of his schemes, and alternately abdicated and returned 
to the throne, until his death in 148 1. 

The " Re Cavelleiro," or knightly king, had thus 
done his best to upset the results of the wise policy 
of his grandfather, John " the Great." Fortunately he 
had not done much harm, and his son and successor, 
John II., proved himself able to do more than 
compensate for his father's mistakes. But it must 
not be considered that Affonso V. was a worthless 
king of the type of Ferdinand " the Handsome " ; he 
was rather a restless knight after the fashion of Count 
Henry of Burgundy. He had literary tastes as well ; 
he wrote much and ably on various subjects, and 
showed a great knowledge of what a king ought to be 
— perhaps learnt from the " Cyropaedia " of Xenophon, 
which had been specially translated for his instruction 
by the orders of the Duke of Coimbra. He was a 
liberal patron of men of letters, and made Duarte 
Galvao " Chronista Mor do Reino," or Chronicler- 
General of the kingdom ; and he appointed Azurara, 
another chronicler, librarian and keeper of the ar- 
chives at the Torre del Tombo. He collected a 
great library at Evora, and founded the Order of 




(i) Crown piece of John V. 

(2) Crusado (400 reis) value = 2s. 

(3) Crusado novo. 

(4) Eight tostoens piece (80 reis). 



PORTUGUE 

(5) Quartinho d'our 

(6) Sixteen tostoens, 

(7) Half moidore pi 

(8) Half moidore of 

(9) Moidore of Johr 




(io) Gold piece of 77 tostoens, value = £1 15s. 6d. 

(11) Two-and-a-half moidore piece, value = ^3 2s - 

(12) Dobrao of John V., value = £3 us. 

(13) Five moidore piece, value = £6 5s. 




I38 PORTUGAL DURING THE AGE OF EXPLORATION. 

the Tower and Sword ; but perhaps the truest sign 
of the greatness which existed somewhere in his | 
character is to be found in his answer to the chronicler 
Acenheiro, who asked how he should write the 
chronicle of his reign, when he said simply, "Tell 
the truth." 

These, then, were the kings who reigned in Portugal | 
during the age of discovery. It is now time to see 
the nature, extent, and value of these discoveries, 
which were paving the way for the heroic age of 
Portuguese history. 



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VII. 



THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 



THE internal history of Portugal under the rule of 
John " the Great," his son Edward, and his grandson 
Affonso V., has an interest of its own, yet it is not 
at home that the most important development of 
Portuguese energy is to be perceived. Great as were 
the services rendered to Portugal by King John, 
they mark no stages in the progress of Europe as 
the achievements of Dom Henry, his son, have done. 
Around the name of this prince, the discoveries of 
the Portuguese navigators may best be grouped, for 
he was the guiding spirit of these adventurers, and 
alike inspired and rewarded them. 

Henry, Duke of Viseu, Grand Master of the Order 
of Christ, and governor of the Algarves, was the third 
son of John "the Great" and Philippa of Lancaster, and 
after winning great credit in the capture of Ceuta, he 
took up his residence at Sagre, near Cape St. Vincent, 
in 141 8, and devoted himself to the task of maritime 
exploration. His father and his brothers assisted 
him, but they recognized his special fitness for the 
work, and therefore, though encouraging him as much 



141 

as possible, they did not interfere with his projects, 
and made no attempts to contest his well-earned title 
of Prince Henry " the Navigator." * The prince was 
too wise to neglect scientific knowledge, and he 
therefore summoned learned mathematicians and 
astronomers from all parts of Europe to his aid. 
Enjoying immense wealth, he established an observa- 
tory and a school of navigation at Sagre, where he 
employed the men of science in making charts and, 
above all, in improving the working of the compass. 
This was the theoretical side of his work ; the practical 
was not less important. He collected together all the 
most daring captains and mariners he could find, and 
sent them forth year by year on voyages of discovery 
along the western coast of Africa. He never went on 
any of these expeditions in person, but he was ac- 
knowledged by all the men of science and sailors in 
his pay to be their master and presiding genius. 

The idea in Prince Henry's mind was that it was 
possible to sail round Africa to India, and thus trade 
directly with the East, and he died after more than 
forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his 
dreams. There were legends of old time, which he 
knew well, that the southern continent could be sailed 
round, legends probably founded on the tales of 
Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period 
could assert that these legends were founded upon 
fact. If it were true, and ships could sail direct from 

1 The leading authority for the discoveries of the Portuguese in this 
century is " The Life of Prince Henry of Portugal, surnamed the Navi- 
gator, and its results," by R. H. Major, London, 1868, of which a 
Portuguese translation, by J. A. Ferreira Brandao, was published at 
Lisbon in 1876. 



PRINCE HENRY S IDEAS. 143 

Lisbon to India, it was easy to see what enormous 
profits must accrue to the people who found and 
followed this route. At that time the products of the 
East came by a long and dangerous journey to Venice, 
whence they were distributed over Europe. They 
had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the 
Levant, or else to be borne up the Red Sea and 
carried across Egypt. By either way the expenses 
and risk were enormous, and the prices of the com- 
modities of the East were proportionately great 
Could a direct sea route be discovered, it was obvious 
that these risks and expenses would be avoided, and 
that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the 
distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. 
Dom Henry understood this, and, urged by patriotism, 
as well as by an ardent zeal for the cause of 
exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to dis- 
covering this direct sea route. As has been said, he 
did not himself succeed in attaining this great end, 
but he did much towards it, and the navigators 
who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro 
Alvares Cabral, were men imbued with his ideas and 
in a way his disciples. In speaking of the explorers 
of Prince Henry's time, the word " ship " must not be 
taken to mean the comparatively well-built and well- 
appointed vessels of the end of the sixteenth century. 
Modern sailors would think but little of Drake's 
famous ship the Pelican, yet it was far superior in 
size and equipments to the wretched sailing boats of 
the first explorers of the fifteenth century. The 
enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the 
ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end 



144 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

of his life their vessels could carry as many as sixty 
men, but at the beginning of his career his ships were 
little better than half-decked sailing boats, with a crew 
of at most thirty-six sailors. 

A mere record of discoveries, a list of names of 
places along the inhospitable west coast of Africa, 
may be monotonous in itself; but when the scanty 
means of these early Portuguese manners is con- 
sidered, and the greatness of the goal at which they 
were aiming, a fresh interest arises in the study of the 
map of Africa. The first-fruits of Prince Henry's 
exploring ardour were the discovery of the island of 
Porto Santo by Bartholomeu Perestrello, in 1419, and 
of the more important island of Madeira by Joao 
Goncalves Zarco and Tristao Vaz, in 1420. These 
successes delighted Prince Henry and his father, and 
John "the Great" immediately granted the two islands 
to the Order of Christ, of which his son was Grand 
Master. Prince Henry at once rewarded his captains, 
and leased Porto Santo to Perestrello, and Madeira 
in equal parts to its two discoverers. The provinces 
of the larger island were named Funchal, from 
'■ funcho," the Portuguese word for fennel which 
abounds there, and Machico, said to be derived from 
the Englishman, Robert Machin. Prince Henry's first 
effort, before proceeding further with his explorations, 
was to colonize these two islands. With Porto Santo 
he was not successful, for the rabbits introduced by 
Perestrello ate up the whole produce of the island ; 
and a similar fate seemed to await Madeira, where the 
indigenous vegetation was almost entirely destroyed 
by a great fire, which lasted seven years. However, 



THE STORY OF MACHIN. 145 

he did not despair, and it was Dom Henry who had 
the sugar-cane and the vine, which are to this day the 
chief sources of its wealth, introduced into Madeira. 

It is but fair to mention that many authors have 
held these great discoveries to be merely re-discoveries. 
Some people affirm that Madeira was really discovered 
by Emmanuel Pessanha, the first Lord High Admiral 
of Portugal, in 135 1, during the reign of Affonso "the 
Brave," and there seems to be more foundation for the 
story of Robert Machin, which is at all events of great 
antiquity. The story runs that Robert Machin, son 
of a merchant in Bristol, loved and was beloved by a 
lady of noble birth, whose relations refused to counte- 
nance him, and threw him into prison. About the 
year 1370, on his release, he found that his lady love 
had married a wealthy baron, but he continued his 
suit and she consented to elope with him. He took 
her on board a ship intending to go to France, but a 
gale came on and the ship, after being driven south 
for thirteen days, struck upon an island. They found 
the island uninhabited and very beautiful, and Machin 
and some of his companions took up their residence 
upon it, and built huts under the branches of a 
spreading tree. Here they lived very happily until a 
storm one day drove the ship from its moorings, which 
so grieved the lady that she died in despair at the 
thought of never seeing her native land again. She 
was buried beneath the tree, and Machin soon followed 
her to the grave, having first erected a cross with a 
brief inscription, narrating his adventures, and begging 
any Christians who might come to the island to erect 
a church over the place where her remains rested. 



I46 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

After his death, those of his companions, who re- 
mained, determined to try to escape in the ship's boat, 
but they were taken by a Moorish cruiser and sold for 
slaves. While in captivity in Morocco, one of the 
Englishmen told a Spanish fellow-captive, named 
Juan Morales, the whole history, and this Morales, 
being afterwards taken prisoner by Joao Gong^lves 
Zarco, related the narrative to his captor and to 
Prince Henry. Morales, according to this tale, was 
the pilot of Zarco and Tristao Vaz on their voyage 
of discovery, and the story goes on to say that the 
grave of the two English lovers was discovered, and 
that Machin's dying desire was fulfilled, and a church 
erected over their remains. Whatever may be the 
truth of this legend, and whether Machin ever landed 
on Madeira or not, the fact remains that the first 
occupation of the island, and its being marked upon 
the chart, were due to the enterprise of Prince 
Henry. 

The discovery of these islands formed no part of 
Prince Henry's plan. His desire was to circum- 
navigate Africa ; the expeditions of Perestrello, Zarco, 
and Tristao Vaz were all intended to sail south 
and double Cape Bojador, and it was certainly in 
an attempt to achieve this purpose that Perestrello 
was driven out to sea to the island of Porto Santo. 
Many years passed, during which Cape Bojador 
remained the great obstacle to the Portuguese 
mariners. Year after year Prince Henry despatched 
fleets of two or three ships at a time, which 
sometimes made important discoveries among the 
islands off the north-west coast of Africa, but they 



DISCOVERY OF THE AZORES. 147 

never doubled the great cape. Among these dis- 
coveries the most important were the Canary 
Islands and the Azores. With regard to the former 
group, the Portuguese were met by a prior claim 
on the part of Castile ; and after a dispute, into the 
details of which it is not necessary to enter, John 
the Great, in pursuance of his consistent policy of 
maintaining peace with Spain, and at the request of 
Dom Henry, who did not wish to waste his strength 
in occupying islands, surrendered the Canary Islands 
to Castile. The Portuguese, however, successfully 
maintained their claim to the Azores, which still 
belong to them. This group was first touched at by 
Bartholomeu Perestrello, the discoverer of Porto 
Santo, in 143 1 ; and in the following year Goncalo 
Velho Cabral discovered the island of Santa Maria. 
To this captain was allotted the task of further 
exploring and occupying this cluster of islands ; and 
in 1444 he discovered the island of St. Miguel or St. 
Michael, where he founded the beautiful little town 
which gives its name to the St. Michael oranges. 

Prince Henry's endeavours were crowned with 
partial success, though not in the reign of his father, 
for in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador, and in 
1436 Affonso Goncalves Baldaya reached the Rio d' 
Ouro. The attention of " the Navigator " was, how- 
ever, soon absorbed by the progress of political affairs 
at home, and he had for a time to abandon his 
schemes of exploration. He served with distinction 
in the unfortunate expedition to Tangier, and then 
played an important part in the events, which ended 
in confirming the power of his brother Dom Pedro, 



I48 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

the Duke of Coimbra, as Regent of Portugal. This 
enlightened prince took the greatest interest in the 
African explorations, and he assisted Prince Henry 
with even greater ardour than King John or King 
Edward. These were the most successful years of 
Prince Henry's career. In 1441 Antao Goncalves 
went a hundred leagues further than the Rio d'Ouro, 
and in the same year Nuno Tristao, the greatest and 
most daring of all Prince Henry's captains, reached 
the cape which closes on the south the sort of 
shoulder formed by North-west Africa, and named it 
the Cabo Branco or White Cape. He did more than 
this ; he brought home several captives, including a 
native prince. The capture was hailed with enthusiasm, 
and from this time the slave trade on the coast of 
Africa really began. 

It is strange that Prince Henry " the Navigator " 
should have been the founder of the African slave 
trade, but so it was, and the reasons are not hard to 
find. The provinces of the Alemtejo and the Algarves 
had never been thoroughly populated since their 
conquest, and the great lords and religious military 
orders, the owners of those districts, had never been 
able to bring them properly under cultivation. Slavery 
was not regarded with the modern sentiment of ab- 
horrence ; it w r as the natural fate of prisoners of war, 
and flourished greatly in the neighbouring country of 
Morocco. Prince Henry and the Duke of Coimbra felt 
the need of procuring labour to cultivate the southern 
provinces, and it seemed quite natural to them to 
carry off the unfortunate savages of the African coast. 
This idea greatly impressed the Portuguese nobles 



THE SLAVE TRADE. I49 

with Prince Henry's sagacity ; they did not under- 
stand his schemes about discovering a direct route 
to India, but they highly appreciated the intro- 
duction of cheap forced labour. The commence- 
ment of the slave trade greatly favoured the 
progress of the Portuguese navigators ; they no longer 
came home empty-handed, and exploring became a 
profitable as well as an adventurous business. In 
1444. Lancarote, with a fleet of eight ships, went upon 
a slave-taking expedition, and brought home two 
hundred captives, who were set to work on the domains 
of the Order of Christ in the Aigarves, and in 1445 
the same captain sailed with a fleet of fourteen ships 
from Lagos and brought home a still larger body of 
unfortunate slaves. From this time forth the tracks 
made by the explorers were followed closely by the 
slave-dealers. Large profits were made in the trade, 
which had its centre at Lagos, and by the labour 
of the captives the great estates of southern Portugal 
were speedily brought under cultivation. The 
employment of slave labour was to have serious 
consequences in the near future ; but at this period, 
during the life of Dom Henry, it had not yet begun 
to drive the poorer class of the Portuguese people out 
of work in the fields, and into more precarious 
modes of earning a livelihood. 

It is not necessary to do more than notice the com- 
mencement of the slave trade here ; it is far more 
important to trace the progress of the explorers. 1 In 

1 There is a good deal of contentious literature on the chronology of 
the African voyages of the Portuguese explorers, and in this account 
Mr. Major's " Prince Henry the Navigntor" has been followed. 



150 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

1445 Nuno Tristao sailed as far as the Senegal 
river, and in the same year, Diniz Dias, his most 
daring rival, discovered Guinea, and first saw the 
really black negroes. This advance, as a glance at 
the map will show, meant much ; the Portuguese 
explorers had now thoroughly learnt how to find 
their way round the inhospitable shoulder of North- 
west Africa ; Cape Bojador and Cabo Branco had no 
terrors for them, and their hopes of reaching India 
were excited by finding that the coast trended 
abruptly to the east. The country, too, was very 
different to that which they had toiled around so 
slowly ; the fertile land of Guinea with its powerful 
negroes, its spices and ivory, and its prospect of gold, 
gave them encouragement, and on their return, the 
acute merchants of Lisbon were not long in opening 
up a trade with the newly- discovered country. Un- 
fortunately the slave trade accompanied the ventures 
of the Lisbon merchants, and the white men, instead 
of making friends with the blacks, did not hesitate to 
seize them and to sell them into slavery. The 
Church made no effort to restrain this traffic ; the 
blacks were heathen, and so it was to their advantage 
to be brought to a Christian land to work, and 
perhaps to be converted. 

The next two years were marked by the greatest 
activity. In 1446 Diniz Diaz reached Cape Verde, 
which he called by that name from its green appear- 
ance; and in the same year, Nuno Tristam was killed 
in a chase after slaves, and Alvaro Fernandes, the 
nephew of Joao Goncalves Zarco, who had discovered 
Madeira, starting from that island, went one hundred 



DISCOVERIES ON THE AFRICAN COAST. 151 

leagues further than Cape Verde, and left Joao 
Fernandes at his own request among the negroes. It 
is a strange commentary upon the death of Nuno 
Tristao, that Joao Fernandes was able to remain 
among the negroes for seven months in safety, 
learning their language and studying their customs. 
It shows that there was no deep-rooted antipathy 
between the whites and the blacks, and that the 
latter only attacked the Christians, when they 
showed themselves enemies, and tried to rob them 
of their liberty. Joao Fernandes was taken off in 
safety by Antam Goncalves, in the year 1447, and 
testified to Prince Henry that the blacks, if heathen, 
were not monsters, but people of peaceful and affec- 
tionate dispositions. 

This activity was followed by another pause. Dom 
Henry was deeply affected by the overthrow of his 
brother Dom Pedro ; and his nephew, Affonso V., 
failed to give him the moral and material support he 
had formerly received. It is indeed a blot upon the 
reputation of " the Navigator " that he made no greater 
effort to assist the great regent, and that he was not 
by his side at Alfarrobeira. The next decade is 
marked only in the history of maritime exploration 
by the discoveries of Luigi Cadamosto, a Venetian, 
who had entered the service of Dom Henry, and who 
had become his right hand both as a cartographer 
and an explorer. On the voyages of Cadamosto 
there has been much controversy. Some writers, 
resting upon certain notes of his, assert that he dis- 
covered the Gambia as early as 1445, and the Cape 
Verde Islands in 1446 ; but modern inquirers believe 




STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. 

(From Major's "Prince Henry the Navigator:') 



DEATH OF PRINCE HENRY. 153 

that he greatly antedated his discoveries in order to 
enhance his own glory. It is now generally believed 
that in his famous voyage in 1455 and 1456 he 
managed to get past the Senegal, and discovered the 
Gambia, and that the Cape Verde Islands were dis- 
covered in 1460 by Diogo Gomes. The tale that 
Cadamosto went as far as the Rio Grande is quite 
discredited, and seems in itself, apart from the 
evidence, to be most improbable. 

The period of the discoveries made under the 
direction and inspiration of Prince Henry " the 
Navigator " was then at an end, for he died at Sagre 
on November 13, 1460. What he had done appears 
better from a study of the map then in any number 
of words. He had not discovered a direct sea route 
to India, but he had paved the way for it, and it was 
quite certain that, if it existed, the gallant captains 
trained by him would find the route in time. His 
services are beyond dispute, and though he left no 
successor to carry on the work, he had given it such an 
impulse, that it remained only for the sailors them- 
selves to complete it. He was never married, but 
was succeeded as Duke of Viseu, Lord of Beja and 
Madeira, and Grand Master of the Order of Christ, by 
his nephew, Dom Ferdinand, the second son of King 
Edward, and brother of Affonso V., whom he had 
adopted. This prince had also become Grand Master 
of the Order of Santiago by his marriage with his first 
cousin, Donna Leonor, daughter of Dom John, the 
fourth son of John " the Great," by whom he was 
father of Dom Manoel, or Emmanuel, who reigned 
under the title of Emmanuel "the Fortunate," and 



151 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

was to reap the fruits of the discoveries of Vasco da 
Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral 

The death of Prince Henry did much to check 
maritime exploration for exploration's sake, and for 
the purpose of discovering the direct route to India ; 
but the slave trade and the general trade with the 
Guinea Coast were growing into importance, and the 
results of the labours of the early Portuguese 
navigators were not forgotten. AfTonso V. was more 
bent on his Moorish expeditions and his schemes 
upon the crown of Castile, than upon maritime dis- 
coveries ; but, nevertheless, something of importance 
was done during his reign in strengthening the hold 
of the Portuguese upon the part of the African coast 
already known, and in making their topographical 
information more exact. What Affonso did was 
done rather to improve trade or protect it for the 
benefit of his own exchequer than for love of explora- 
tion. It was for these reasons that he built a fort 
on the island of Arguin, near Cabo Branco, which 
became the depot for the trade with Guinea, and 
eventually he granted the monopoly of the trade 
with the African coast to Fernan Gomes for five 
hundred crusados a year. This enterprising merchant 
employed able captains, of whom the chief were Joao 
de Santarem, Pedro Escobar, and Lopo Gongalves, 
who worked their way further along the coast ; and 
in 147 1, in which year Fernando Po discovered 
the islands of St. Thomas, Fernando Bom and Anno 
Bom, they crossed the equator, and explored as far 
as Cape St. Catherine. 

John II., the successor of AfTonso V., set the seal 




TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY. 

{From Mayor's "Prince Henry the Navigator.' 1 '') 



156 THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 

upon Prince Henry's labours. He it was who built 
the fort of Ehnina, and took the title of Lord or 
Guinea ; and it was in his reign that Diogo Cao or 
Cam discovered the Congo in 1484, and Bartholomeu 
Diaz reached Algoa Bay in i486, and doubled the 
cape, which he called Cabo Tormentoso, or Stormy 
Cape, from the winds he met there, but which his 
sovereign, presaging from this fortunate voyage the 
future glory of his country, called the Cape of Good 
Hope. John II., like Prince Henry, was fated not to 
see the fulfilment of his dearest hopes, and it was not 
until the fifteenth century was within three years of 
its close that Vasco da Gama made his way from 
Lisbon to Calicut. 

While, in political life and commercial prosperity, 
the people of Portugal had been at home becoming 
more civilized, more self-controlled, and more wealthy 
during the fifteenth century, its sailors had been grow- 
ing more daring and enterprising. In the sixteenth 
century the Portuguese were to have their reward. 
Lisbon was to take the place of Venice as the 
depot for all the products of the East ; the trade 
of Persia, India, China, Japan, and the Spice Islands, 
was to fall into their hands ; they were to produce 
great captains and writers, and were to become the 
wealthiest nation in Europe. But that same sixteenth 
century was to see the Portuguese power sink, and 
the independence, won by Affonso Henriques and 
maintained by John "the Great," vanish away; it 
was to see Portugal, which had been the greatest 
nation of its time, decline in its fame, and become 
a mere province of Spain. Hand in hand with in- 



THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS. 1 57 

creased wealth came corruption and depopulation, and 
within a single century after the epoch-making voyage 
of Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese people, tamed by 
the Inquisition, were to show no sign of their former 
hardihood. This is the lesson that the Story of 
Portugal in the sixteenth century teaches, that the 
greatness of a nation depends not upon its wealth 
and commercial prosperity, but upon the thews and 
sinews and the stout hearts of its people. 




VIII. 

THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

John II., surnamed "the Perfect," the only son of 
Affonso V., succeeded his father as King of Portugal in 
1 48.1, and his short reign was marked by events of 
the utmost importance at home, as well as by the 
great discoveries of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu 
Diaz. He had shown himself a gallant soldier in 
his father's last African expedition, when he was 
knighted, and at the battle of Toro, and also a 
capable ruler, as regent, during the absence of 
Affonso V. in France, and during that king's frequent 
periods of abdication. He saw the folly of his father 
in wasting his strength in African expeditions, and in 
fruitless wars with Castile, and he therefore recurred 
to the wise policy of his great-grandfather, John " the 
Great," in avoiding all interference with Spanish affairs, 
and maintaining a close alliance with England. He 
also, as has already been said, adopted enthusi- 
astically all the schemes of Prince Henry " the 
Navigator," and laboured for the discovery of a route 
to India by sea. He possessed all the hereditary 
aptitude of the princes of the house of A viz for 



KING JOHN " THE PERFECT." 159 

literature, and fostered the spirit of the Renaissance 
in Portugal in the study of the classical languages, 
the advancement of science, and the encouragement 
of art. He was a broad-minded, tolerant man, with 
ideas far in advance of his age in many respects,. and 
possessing at once an inflexible will and remarkable 
sweetness of disposition. 

But John II. was more than all this ; he was 
a politician and a statesman of the first rank, 
and openly professed himself a disciple of Machia- 
velli and a believer in the theory of absolute 
government. He imitated Louis XL of France, 
just as one of his predecessors, Sancho II., had 
imitated Louis IX., and in his policy and in his 
manner of carrying it out, he showed himself an apt 
pupil of his wily master. The first great task he set 
himself, in imitation of that monarch, was to break 
the power of the feudal nobility of Portugal. In 
doing this he relied, and with justice, upon the assist- 
ance of the mass of the people, who had learned 
during the last reign to detest and fear the almost 
unlimited power of the nobles. 

The origin of the enormous estates held by the 
Portuguese nobility has already been pointed out, 
and the attempt made by King Edward to check 
accumulations by the " Lei Mental " has also been 
mentioned ; but this regulation had had. but little 
effect, owing to the profuse prodigality of Affonso V. 
This monarch had granted away nearly the whole 
patrimony of the crown ; and John II. said with justice 
that his father had left him " only the royal high 
roads of Portugal." This liberality had kept Affonso 



l6o THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

poor in spite of the increasing wealth of his people, 
and his extravagance had been such, that he had 
been formally rebuked by a Cortes, held at Guarda 
in 1465, and had been obliged to promise amendment. 
Under the influence of this headstrong monarch and 
his favourites the evils, inherent in the feudal system, 
had increased alarmingly ; crimes in country districts 
were only punished by fines, and every means which 
rapacity could suggest to wring money out of an 
impoverished tenantry were resorted to, while the 
wealth of the great landlords had been increased by 
the improvement in the cultivation of their lands 
due to the large importation of slaves. John II. 
determined to crush the powerful and turbulent 
feudal nobility, and to draw back some of its wealth 
into the royal treasury, and for this purpose he 
summoned a great Cortes to meet at Evora in 148 1, 
the year of his accession. In this Cortes he proposed 
that a "inquiracao geral" should be held into all titles 
to landed property, and that the royal corregidors 
should alone be empowered to dispense and execute 
criminal justice throughout the country. Both 
measures were agreed to, but the nobles determined 
to resist the examination into their titles, and the loss 
of the lucrative privilege of dispensing criminal 
justice, and they combined to oppose the king, under 
the leadership of the Duke of Braganza. 

Ferdinand, Duke of Braganza, was the wealthiest 
and most powerful nobleman, not only in Portugal, 
but in the whole peninsula. He was the grandson 
of Affonso, Count of Barcellos, the illegitimate son 
of John " the Great," who had been created Duke of 



THE DUKE OF BR AG AN Z A. l6l 

Braganza by Affonso V., and he had inherited the vast 
possessions of his grandfather and of his grandmother, 
the daughter of the Holy Constable. These pos- 
sessions had been increased by the lavishness of 
Affonso V., who had showered favours on the first 
and second Dukes of Braganza. Ferdinand possessed 
fifty cities, towns, and castles, and nearly one-third of 
the land of the kingdom ; he was patron of one 
hundred and sixty canonries and religious benefices ; 
he maintained a royal household, and bore the titles 
of Duke of Braganza and Guimaraens, Marquis of 
Villa Vicosa, Count of Barcellos, Ourem, Arrayolos 
and Neiva. and Lord of Montalegre, Monporto, and 
Penafiel. His brothers were nearly as powerful as 
himself. The eldest, Joao, was Marquis of Monte 
Mor, and Constable of the kingdom ; the second, 
Affonso, was Count of Faro ; and the youngest, 
Alvaro, held the important office of Chancellor. In 
the reign of Affonso V. this great nobleman had 
quarrelled fiercely with John II., then heir apparent, 
but he believed he had secured his safety by marrying 
a sister of the future queen, for both Prince John and 
himself married daughters of Ferdinand, Duke of 
Viseu and Beja, the brother of Affonso V., and in- 
heritor of the wealth of Prince Henry " the Navi- 
gator." The Duke of Braganza took the lead in 
opposing the king's decrees passed in the Cortes of 
Evora, and John II. was glad of it, not only because 
he coveted the wealth and lands of the Braganza 
family, which dimmed the splendour of the Crown, 
and on account of their former quarrels in the late 
king's lifetime, but also because he remembered that 



162 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

he was, through his mother, the grandson of the 
great regent, Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who had 
been defeated and slain at Alfarrobeira by this very 
Duke of Braganza and his father. For all these 
reasons John II. decided to strike a sudden and 
decisive blow, which should at once re-establish the 
power of the Crown and paralyze the feudal nobility 
with terror, and he therefore had the Duke of Bra- 
ganza arrested, and executed, after a very short trial, 
at Evora, on June 22, 1483. 

The nobles, however, were not yet defeated, and 
they continued to intrigue against the king's authority 
under the leadership of a yet nearer relation of his 
own, Diogo, Duke of Viseu and Beja, the eldest son 
of Dom Ferdinand, and grandson of King Edward, 
and the brother-in-law alike of the king and of the 
executed Duke of Braganza. But John II. was not 
dismayed : imitating Louis XL of France, he de- 
termined not to spare his own relations, and on 
August 23, 1484, he stabbed the Duke of Viseu with 
his own hand in his palace at Setubal. This murder 
he followed up with decision : he had the Bishop of 
Evora, one of his father's favourites, thrown down a 
well ; and he executed, with or without trial, about 
eighty of the leading noblemen of the country. By 
these means John II. broke the power of the feudal 
nobility for ever, and as happened in France under 
Louis XL, and in England under Henry VII., the 
fall of the nobility was followed by the absolutism of 
the monarch. Now that the nobles had lost their 
power, and the Crown had become wealthy by the 
confiscation of their property, John II. needed the 



THE TREATY OF TORDESILLAS. 1 63 

support of the people, as represented in the Cortes, 
no longer, and he became a despot, though a 
benevolent one. But the weight of this despotism 
was not yet felt, for John II. possessed all the politi- 
cal ability of his grandfathers. He tried to- find 
means for encouraging his nobility, now that they 
were frightened out of treason, to enter into the 
career of maritime exploration, which had been 
opened by Prince Henry, while at home he won the 
love of his people by reorganizing the government of 
the kingdom, and proved so good an administrator 
that the Portuguese gave him the title of " the Perfect 
King." 

It has been said that in his foreign policy John II. 
followed in the course set before him by John the 
Great. With the great monarchs then ruling in 
Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, 
he consistently remained on friendly terms, and in 
1490 his only legitimate son, Affonso, was married to 
Isabella, eldest daughter of these sovereigns. The 
death of this son in the following year, without 
leaving children, was a terrible blow to him, but he 
nevertheless maintained his friendship with Ferdinand 
and Isabella, and in 1494 concluded the Treaty of 
Tordesillas with them. By this treaty, which was 
confirmed by a Bull, issued by Pope Alexander VI., 
the limits of the future possessions of the Spaniards 
and Portuguese in the regions explored and dis- 
covered by their mariners was fixed at 360 east of 
Cape Verde, and it was agreed that the Spaniards 
were to have full right to all lands discovered to the 
west of this line, and the Portuguese to all to the 






164 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

south and east. What a curious commentary this 
treaty forms on that of Cella Nova, concluded three 
hundred years before between Affonso Henriques of 
Portugal and Ferdinand of Leon, by which these two 
monarchs agreed to take the course of the Guadiana 
as the line to separate their future conquests from 
the Moors. Both nations had now developed ; the 
energies of both, heightened by the long struggle with 
the Mohammedans, sought for fresh fields, and ex- 
panding far beyond the boundaries of Europe, were to 
prove themselves, in the one case in Mexico and Peru, 
and in the other in India and the countries of the East. 
In the other cardinal point of the policy of John 
"the Great," the maintenance of a close alliance with 
England, John II. carefully followed the example of 
the founder of the house of Aviz. Affonso V. had 
not neglected this important tradition, and had even 
promised his sister, Donna Catherine, to Edward IV., 
in 146 1, a marriage only frustrated by the death of 
the princess in 1463 ; and the English monarch had 
solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor in 147 1, and 
again after the battle of Barnet in 1472, and he had 
also included the name of the King of Portugal, as 
an ally of England, in his treaty with Louis XL of 
France, in 1475. John II. drew the bonds of friend- 
ship still closer, and sent important embassies to the 
three kings of England, who ruled in quick succes- 
sion in this country. In 1482 Edward IV. ratified the 
Treaty of Windsor in the presence of the ambassadors 
of John II., and recognized his new title of " Lord of 
Guinea," and in 1484 Richard III. did the same. In 
1485 the King of Portugal proposed in a Cortes, 



THE REIGN OF JOHN II. 165. 

held at Algoba^a, that his only sister Joanna should 
be given in marriage to Richard III., but the princess, 
who was famed for her piety and wished to become a 
nun, fortunately for herself, refused the alliance, as she 
afterwards did the hand of Charles VIII. of France. 
Henry VII. bore no enmity towards John II. on ac- 
count of his friendship with Richard III., but, on the 
contrary, showed every disposition to assist him in 
his struggle with his nobility, and in 1488 went so 
far as to arrest the Count of Pennamacor, one of the 
insurgent Portuguese noblemen who had escaped to 
England, and to imprison him in the Tower. It 
was in this year also that the last treaty of com- 
merce between England and Portugal, before the 
famous Methuen treaty in 1703, was concluded at 
Lisbon by Richard Nanfran and Thomas Savage, 
who had been sent for that purpose, and to invest 
John II. as a Knight of the Garter. 

But it was not only on account of his suppression 
of the power of the feudal nobility, and of his wise 
peace policy, that John " the Perfect " was beloved by 
his people, it was also because he showed himself a 
worthy successor of Prince Henry " the Navigator," 
in promoting exploration, and devoted his best 
energies to discovering a direct route to India. 
The two famous voyages of Diogo Cam and Bar- 
tholomeu Diaz, which had resulted in the discovery 
of the Congo and of the Cape of Good Hope, have 
been mentioned, but it was rather in other directions 
that the originality of mind which distinguished John 
II. showed itself. He was the first European monarch 
who thought that if it might be possible to reach 



EXPLORERS SENT BY JOHN II. 167 

India by sea by sailing round the continent of Africa, 
it might also be possible to find a road to " Cathay " 
by sailing round the continent of Europe to the 
north-east. On this mission he despatched Martim 
Lopes, who sailed past the North Cape into regions 
hitherto unexplored, and discovered the great island 
to the north of Russia, which still bears the name he 
gave it of Nova Zembla. John II. also had ideas of 
striking out new routes to India by land, or at least 
of exploring the land routes in order to correct 
prevalent geographical mistakes. With these ideas 
he sent forth the two first European explorers of the 
interior of Africa, Pedro de Evora and Goncalo 
Annes, who managed to get as far as Timbuctoo. 
Still more important were the missions which he 
sent overland to India, and in search of that mythical 
Christian potentate, Prester John. The two travellers 
he despatched were Joao Peres de Covilhao and 
Affonso de Payva. The former of these enterprising 
men made his way safely to India by following the 
regular trade route and accompanying the caravans. 
He visited both Goa and Calicut, and though he was 
refused a passage to the Cape, he managed to find his 
way back to Arabia, and eventually to Abyssinia, 
where he became the chief adviser and almost prime 
minister of the king, at whose capital he died. The 
other traveller, Affonso de Payva, went direct to 
Abyssinia, where the mythical Prester John was 
supposed to reign, and also died there. 

The energies of John II. were so wholly absorbed 
in these expeditions to the East, and he felt so 
certain that he was in the right direction in try- 




VASCO DA GAMA. {From the Shane MS. 197, folio 18.) 



THE COURT OF JOHN II. 1 69 

ing to reach India by eastern routes, that he made 
the great mistake in 1493 of dismissing Christopher 
Columbus from his court as a visionary. He lis- 
tened to all the arguments of the great discoverer 
with patience, but he did not agree with his con- 
clusions that it v/as possible to reach India by. sailing 
westwards across the Atlantic, and he therefore lost 
the opportunity of immortalizing his name and reign 
by a greater discovery than that of Vasco da Gama, 
the discovery of the vast continent of America. In 
other departments his energies found full scope. 
He greatly improved the art of ship-building, and 
encouraged the immigration of skilled shipwrights 
from England and Denmark ; he did much to pro- 
mote the improvement of fire-arms, and established 
a cannon foundry and a corps of artillery, of which 
he made Diogo de Azambuja the first Inspector- 
General ; and, above all, he patronized literature, and 
encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the 
Portuguese chroniclers. His court abounded in great 
men, the founders of great families and the fathers of 
the coming generation of heroes, among whom may 
be noted, besides his navigators, Diogo Cam, Bar- 
tholomeu Diaz, and Lopo Infante, and his famous 
travellers just mentioned, his Lord High Admirals, 
Pedro de Alboquerque and Lopo Vaz de Azevedo ; 
his Lord Stewards, Diogo Soares de Albergaria, 
Pedro de Noronha, and Joao de Menezes ; his Master 
of the Horse, Affonso de Alboquerque ; his Secretary- 
General Ruy Galvao ; and his Chancellor, the acute 
lawyer and most strenuous supporter of the despotic 
power of the king, Ruy de Graa. 



170 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

Yet the reign of John " the Perfect," full as it was 
of great events, and great as is its importance in 
the history of Portugal, was but comparatively short. 
His happiness was clouded by the sad death of his 
only son, Dom AfTonso, in 1491, the year after he had 
married the Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, who then ruled in Spain, and he felt 
with repugnance that his successor on the throne must 
be Manoel, or Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, the brother of 
the murdered Duke of Viseu, a man in whom he 
could see no fit qualities for carrying on his own great 
schemes and projects. To oust him John II. thought 
of legitimatizing his illegitimate son by Anna de 
Mendonga, Dom Jorge, or George, whom he had 
made Grand Master of the Orders of Santiago and 
Aviz, but the reflection that on his death the country 
he loved so well would then be torn by civil war 
restrained him, and he did not interfere with the 
law of succession. During the last days of his life the 
"Perfect King" was busily engaged in fitting out the 
fleet which, under Vasco da Gama, was to realize his 
most cherished dream, and he was still in the ripe 
strength of manhood when he died at Alvor, in the 
province of the Algarves, on October 25, 1495. 

The quarter of a century during which the suc- 
cessor of John II., Emmanuel "the Fortunate," reigned, 
is the great heroic period of Portuguese history, and 
during it the great deeds, which make the Story of 
Portugal an important part of the history of Europe 
and of the world, were done. Discoveries and daring 
feats of arms distinguished nearly every year of this 
truly fortunate reign, and the fame of the great 



KING EMMANUEL "THE FORTUNATE." 1J1 

Portuguese generals, captains, and travellers is rivalled 
only by that of its poets and men of letters. As the 
progress of the Portuguese in the East and West, and 
their great literary development, will be examined in 
three different chapters, it will here be possible only 
to narrate the events of Emmanuel's reign in Portugal, 
and to show how, at the period of the greatest glory of 
the country, the age of its rapid decline was at hand. 
The causes of that decline were manifold, and are 
generally placed in the reign of Emmanuel's successor, 
but the seed of each appeared in the reign of the 
"fortunate" monarch himself. 

Emmanuel himself contributed but little to the 
blaze of glory which illustrates his reign. He de- 
spatched great fleets and armies to distant parts of 
the world, and received the wealth their discoveries 
and exertions brought into his treasury with equa- 
nimity ; but he had only one fixed idea, the old wild 
dream which had brought disaster upon Ferdinand 
"the Handsome" and Affonso V., the longing to sit 
upon the throne of Spain and to unite the kingdoms 
of the peninsula under his sovereignty. To gain this 
end he proposed to marry the Infanta Isabella, the 
eldest daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and 
Queen Isabella of Castile, and widow of the un- 
fortunate Affonso, the only son of John II., and in 
order to be recognized as heir to the kingdoms of 
Spain, he promised to expel the Jews and unbaptized 
Moors from Portugal. 

No class had done more to promote the height of 
commercial prosperity to which Portugal had attained 
than the Portuguese Jews. In another volume of this 



172 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

Series x Mr. Lane- Poole says : " Wherever the arms of 
the Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find 
the Jews in close pursuit," and in no part of the 
peninsula had they collected in greater numbers than 
in the great cities of Portugal, especially in Lisbon, 
Santarem, and Evora. These Jews belonged for the 
most part to the Sephardim, and were in every 
intellectual quality superior to the Ashkenazim, or 
German and Polish Jews ; protected by the Moors, 
they had grown in wealth and power, and when they 
came under the rule of Affonso Henriques, that great 
monarch extended the same tolerance towards them. 
His successors followed his example, and under 
monarchs with commercial aspirations such as Diniz 
and John " the Great," the Jews had been more than 
protected, they had been favoured. While persecuted 
in other countries, they had met with consistent pro- 
tection in Portugal, and they acknowledged the 
generous treatment which they received by extending 
the commerce of their adopted country. The Portu- 
guese Jews possessed a high reputation all over 
Europe for wealth, integrity, and commercial acute- 
ness, and had business agencies and banks in every 
land, which contributed to the wealth of the country, 
which had been for centuries their home. Such 
was the wealthy and industrious class of citizens, 
which Emmanuel consented to banish from his 
dominions, partly to please the bigotry of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, whom he hoped to succeed, and partly in 
order to absorb, as the Portuguese crown eventually 
did, the whole of the coming trade with the East. 

1 " The Story of the Moors in Spain," chapter ii. p. 24. 



EXPULSION OF THE JEWS. 1 73 

These unfortunate families were obliged to leave the 
country, which had been their fatherland, and the 
cities, which had been their homes, from generation to 
generation, with but six months in which to prepare 
for banishment ; they were obliged to dispose of their 
flourishing businesses at a loss, and to start anew in 
the world to find new occupations and new homes. 
It is hardly a matter for wonder, that many Jews 
preferred to be baptized and to become half-hearted 
Christians rather than expatriate themselves, but these 
" Novaes Christiaos " had, as will be seen, no reason 
to rejoice a few years later at their apostasy. With 
the Jews were banished also many unbaptized 
Mohammedans, the especial enemies of Ferdinand 
" the Catholic." This class had become numerous 
since the taking of Granada in 1492, when many of 
them fled from Spain into Portugal, and had been 
kindly received by John II. It is worthy of notice 
that the Most Catholic monarchs, who persuaded 
Emmanuel to take such severe steps against Jews and 
Mohammedans, who were ready to earn an honest 
livelihood as free men, made no protest against the 
thousands of negro slaves, who were being yearly im- 
ported into Portugal, and left to their belief in super- 
stitions far more degrading than the religions either 
of Jews or Moslems. 

For this decree of banishment passed against law- 
abiding Portuguese citizens, Emmanuel had his 
reward, for he was married to the Infanta Isabella in 
1497. But the curse of the Jews followed him, and 
he never sat upon the throne of Spain. Whilst the 
royal bride and bridegroom were passing through the 



174 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

cities of Castile in a state progress as heirs to the 
thrones of Spain, Queen Isabella fell ill, and died at 
Toledo on August 24, 1498. She left an infant son, 
Dom Miguel, at whose birth she had died, but he did 
not survive to realize the hopes of his father, and died 
in 1500. Even these two deaths did not put an 
end to Emmanuel's schemes, and in the same year 
1500, he married the Donna Maria of Castile, the 
sister of his deceased wife. This marriage was not so 
likely to promote his success as the first ; for whereas 
the Infanta Isabella was the eldest daughter of 
Ferdinand and his queen, the Infanta Maria was but 
the third daughter, and the daughter between them, 
the Infanta Joanna, had a son who, as the legitimate 
heir of his grandparents, was to succeed to thrones of 
Spain and eventually become the Emperor Charles V. 
By his second wife, Emmanuel had no less than six 
sons, but what has been called the " curse of the Jews " 
pursued them, and his descendants soon failed in the 
direct line. Even to the last, the same wild fancy 
possessed him, and in 15 18, the year after his second 
wife's death, he married again, and this time also with 
a view of succeeding Charles V., for he married his 
own niece, the sister of the Emperor. She survived 
him, and afterwards married Francis I. of France. 

From these restless longings after the neighbouring 
thrones, and the ignoble schemes of the Portuguese 
monarch, it is a relief to turn to the actions of the 
Portuguese heroes. Their deeds will be related 
separately, but after the barren intrigues of Emma- 
nuel, it will be as well to mention chronologically 
the chief discoveries of his captains. In 1497, 



THE DISCOVERIES OF THE PORTUGUESE. 1 75 

Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and 
reached India by sea ; in 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral 
discovered Brazil, and Gaspar Corte-Real, Labrador ; 
in 1 501 Joao da Nova Castella discovered the islands 
of St. Helena and Ascension ; and in that year and in 
1503 Amerigo Vespucci first visited the Rio Plata and 
Paraguay ; in 1506 Tristao da Cunha discovered the 
island which bears his name ; and Ruy Pereira 
Coutinho explored Madagascar and the Mauritius ; in 
1507 Lourengo de Almeida touched at the Maldive 
Islands ; in 1 509 Diogo Lopes de Sequeira occupied 
Malacca and explored the island of Sumatra ; in 15 12 
Francisco Serrao discovered the Moluccas; in 15 13 
Pedro de Mascarenhas first touched at the lie de 
Bourbon or Reunion ; in 15 16 Duarte Coelho worked 
his way up the coast of Cochin China and explored 
Siam ; in 15 17 Fernao Peres de Andrade established 
himself at Canton, and the same explorer made his 
way to Pekin in 1521 ; and in 1520 Magalhaes 
(Magellan), a Portuguese sailor, though in the Spanish 
service, passed through the Straits which bear his 
name and led the way into the Pacific Ocean. 

These exploits make up a list of achievements of 
which any country might be proud ; the bare cata- 
logue of them, without any epithets, justifies the 
description given of the reign of Emmanuel " the 
Fortunate " as the heroic age of Portuguese 
history. It has been shown that the king contributed 
little to this greatness, and the mistaken direction 
of his foreign policy has been noticed. It now 
remains to be seen how the seeds of rapid decline 
were sown. Emmanuel was far from being a bad 



176 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

man, though he does not show to advantage, when 
compared with such monarchs as John " the Great " 
and John "the Perfect ;" he was a moral and pious 
man, — too pious as his expulsion of the Jews clearly 
demonstrates ; he can hardly be blamed for his 
extravagance and taste for luxury, when the enormous 
wealth of the Portuguese Crown is considered ; and he 
spent much of this wealth on art and architecture, as 
the construction of the magnificent palace of Belem, 
near Lisbon, testifies to this day. This superb 
building may have many faults to the eye of the 
architectural expert, but to the ordinary mind it 
seems almost the most superb structure in the world. 
With regard to internal administration, Emmanuel 
did not do much harm ; the wheels of government had 
been put into such perfect order by John II. that the 
machine of administration worked well without inter- 
ference. But John II. had made one great mistake, 
the fruits of which appeared in the reign of 
Emmanuel and his successor ; he had changed the 
monarchy of Portugal from being patriotic and de- 
pendent on the good will of the people into an 
absolute monarchy, in which the king's will was 
everything. The overthrow of the nobility and the 
wealth of the Crown had made the king independent 
of the support of his people, as represented in the 
Cortes. The nobility, deprived of their power at 
home, had thrown themselves with ardour into the 
career of Eastern discovery and conquest, and nearly 
all the great heroes of the period belonged to noble 
families. Emmanuel recognized the greatness of 
these men, and showered honours upon them ; but in 



THE SEEDS OF DECLINE. 1 77 

the next generation, the fatal result of despotism 
became evident, and the nobility, instead of thinking 
of their country, and looking to their fellow citizens' 
approbation for their reward, looked rather to the 
king, and made loyalty to a man and not to their 
country their guiding principle. This attachment to 
the king was encouraged by the wealth of the Crown, 
which enabled the sovereign to bestow large pensions 
and pay enormous salaries, and the Portuguese 
nobility began to become a nobility of courtiers 
instead of a nobility of patriots. This extraordinary 
wealth of the Crown was due to its absorption of the 
trade with India, for the wealth of the East was 
conveyed to Lisbon on royal ships, and fetched thence 
by enterprising traders of other nations. It was then 
that the mistake of Emmanuel in banishing the Jews 
became more and more obvious, for Portugal only 
brought the products of Asia to Europe, but did not 
distribute them throughout Europe. It was in these 
respects that the seeds of decline were sown, in the 
loss of public spirit, and the absorption by the Crown 
of the whole wealth won by the valour of the people. 
Yet these steps towards decline were not at first 
visible to the eyes either of foreign nations or of the 
people themselves. The glory of Portugal was spread 
abroad, and the wealth of its monarch and his 
splendour became proverbial. The great literary 
movement, which in this reign is represented by Gil 
Vicente, Ayres Barbosa, Garcia de Resende, and Ber- 
nardim Ribeiro, will be discussed in another chapter, 
but it must be noted here in regard to Emmanuel, 
that, though he did banish the Jews, he was broad- 



178 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

minded enough to be a patron of literature and that 
he was in this respect the superior of the fanatical 
bigot who succeeded him. 

Emmanuel, as he increased in wealth, bestowed 
great appanages on his sons, while his daughters were 
sought in marriage by the greatest princes in Chris- 
tendom. His eldest son Dom John married Catherine 
of Austria, sister of Charles V. Of his other sons, 
three — Dom Luis, Dom Ferdinand, and Dom Edward 
— were created respectively dukes of Beja, Guarda, and 
Guimaraens, while the other two took holy orders 
and became cardinals. Of his two surviving daughters, 
the elder, Donna Isabel, married the Emperor Charles 
V., and the younger, Donna Beatrice, the divinity to 
whom the poet Bernardim Ribeiro addressed his 
songs, married Charles III., Duke of Savoy. With 
such a family of sons it did not seem likely that in a 
few short years the male line of the house of Aviz 
would become extinct, and it was with a feeling of 
pride in his wealth and with assured confidence in 
the perpetuation of his line that Emmanuel " the 
Fortunate " died in his beautiful palace at Belem, on 
December 12, 1521. 

The reign of John III. is that in which the rapid 
decline of Portugal is most perceptible. All the 
germs of decay which had appeared in the reign of 
Emmanuel, developed during the reign of his son, by 
the end of which, though the sovereign of Portugal 
was the richest in Europe, not excepting the Emperor 
himself, the greatness of the country was obviously 
disappearing. The natural growth of this decline was 
assisted by the fanaticism of John III., who was a 



THE REIGN OF JOHN III. Ijg 

bigot of the most pronounced type, and who power- 
fully aided the extinction of the greatness of the 
country by his introduction of the Inquisition. 
Though personally a pious and estimable man, he 
was absolutely unable to take any steps to check the 
downfall of his country's greatness, and considered the 
greatest fame of his reign would be due to the estab- 
lishment of the Inquisition and the introduction of 
the Jesuits. The greatest credit that can be given to 
him is that he kept his country out of all European 
complications, a task made comparatively easy by his 
close alliance with the greatest monarch in Europe, 
the Emperor Charles V. This alliance was sealed by 
three marriages ; for King John was married to the 
Infanta Catherine, the sister of Charles V., his only 
son Dom John was married to the Infanta Joanna, 
daughter of Charles V., and his only daughter, Donna 
Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the 
Asturias, the eldest son of Charles V., and afterwards 
King Philip II. These marriages knitted the bonds of 
alliance closely between the reigning houses of Spain 
and Portugal, and a powerful Portuguese fleet under 
the king's brother, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, assisted 
in the Spanish expedition against Tunis in 1535. 
Yet fighting with the Moors seemed to have lost its 
charm for the Portuguese people, for during the next 
ten years, all the chief towns held by Portugal in 
northern Africa, Azamor, Cafim, Cabo do Sul, and 
even Arzila and Alcacer Seguier, the captures of 
Affonso "the African," were abandoned, in order that 
the whole strength of the country might be concen- 
trated on its Indian and Brazilian possessions. 



l8o THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

This quiet abandonment of all the north African 
possessions, except Ceuta and Mazagon, affords a yet 
further proof of the change in the character of the 
Portuguese nobility and their sovereign. They no 
longer desired to fight against the old hereditary 
enemy of the Christian religion, as crusaders; John 
III. was no "Re Cavalleiro " like Affonso V., but 
preferred stamping out heresy at home to fighting 
infidels abroad ; and king and nobles alike agreed 
that it was better to expend their power in the 
wealthy Indies than in barren Africa. The nobles 
became more and more dependent on the Crown, and 
spent all their energies in intriguing for " moradias " 
or pensions from the Courts and for rich governments 
abroad. The absolutism of the king and the employ- 
ment of crowds of sycophant courtiers spread corrup- 
tion into every department of government, and the 
officials of all sorts, both in Portugal and India, 
hurried to make fortunes by every means, honest or 
otherwise, in their power. " Personal worship of the 
king," in the words of an able Portuguese writer, 
"had eaten out patriotism," 1 and though such a man 
as Dom Joao de Castro may be cited as a specimen 
of the great-hearted Portuguese nobleman of the 
finest type, most of the nobility sank into Court 
lackeys or greedy fortune hunters, and even the 
famous navigator, Fernao de Magalhaes, deserted his 
country and entered the service of Spain, because 
the pension he coveted was not conferred upon him 

1 " Apontamentos para a Historia da Conquista de Portugal por 
Filippe II," by A. P. Lopes de Mendonca, in vol. ii. of the " Annaes 
das Sciencias Moraes e Politicas." 



DEPOPULATION OF PORTUGAL. I«I 

The Asiatic trade, it must be insisted upon, was the 
monopoly of the Crown, and only indirectly profited 
the ordinary trading classes, and in the hot pursuit 
of wealth, agriculture was neglected. 

There was, however, a more serious cause for the 
decline of the power of Portugal than the absolu- 
tism of the Crown, the want of patriotism of the 
nobility, or even than the corruption of the officials, 
and that was the rapid depopulation of the country. 
The Alemtejo and Algarves had never been 
thoroughly peopled, for the devastations caused by 
the Moorish wars could not be easily repaired ; and, 
though the exertions of Diniz "the Labourer " had made 
the Beira the garden of the whole Iberian peninsula, 
the part of the kingdom to the south of the Tagus 
had remained either in the hands of the military 
religious orders or split up into large feudal estates. 
The great discoveries at the end of the fifteenth 
and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries largely 
checked the natural increase of population. Not 
only did the bulk of the young men gladly volunteer 
to man the fleets and serve in the armies in India and 
the East, but whole families emigrated to Madeira, 
and after 1530 to Brazil. The Portuguese are 
essentially an adventurous nation, fond of travelling 
and full of enterprise, and no difficulty was found in 
manning the great Indian fleets and recruiting the 
armies of Alboquerque and his successors. Of the 
thousands who flocked to Asia, but few ever returned. 
The incidents of perpetual warfare, and the noxious 
climate, killed off most, and of those who survived, 
many married native women and settled down in 



l82 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

India. Even of the people who did remain in 
Portugal, few remained in their native homesteads 
engaged in agriculture ; most crowded into Lisbon, 
where the necessities of the Eastern trade afforded 
work for all. The capital trebled its population in 
eighty years, in spite of its most unsanitary condition 
and the periodical pestilences which ravaged it. The 
king, the nobles, and the military orders were, how- 
ever, quite undisturbed by this extensive emigration 
and rapid depopulation, for their large estates were 
much more cheaply cultivated by African slaves, who 
had been imported in such numbers that the Algarves 
was almost entirely populated by them, and in Lisbon 
itself they out-numbered the free men by the middle 
of the sixteenth century. In this respect the 
condition of Portugal resembled that of Italy at the 
time of the decline of the Roman Empire, as the 
wealth of Lisbon resembled that of Imperial Rome, 
while the utter corruption and oppression of the 
officials in the Indian settlements resembled only too 
closely the peculation and corruption of the Roman 
proconsuls and procurators. 

While the Portuguese nation was exhibiting these 
signs of rapid decadence, another factor of decline was 
added by the religious zeal of John III., who, from 
the moment of his accession, had striven to introduce 
the Inquisition into Portugal. The Church of Rome 
was not likely to hinder his pious desire, but for 
several years the " novaes Christians " or neo- 
Christians, as the half-hearted converts made from 
the Jews, on condition that they might remain in 
Portugal, were called, managed to ward off the blow. 



THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL. 1 83 

But the king's earnest wish was gratified at last, and 
in 1536 the tribunal of the Holy Orifice was estab- 
lished in Portugal, with Diogo da Silva, Bishop of 
Ceuta, as first Grand Inquisitor, who was soon 
succeeded by the king's brother, the Cardinal Dom 
Henry. The Inquisition quickly destroyed all that 
was left of the old Portuguese spirit, and so effectually 
stamped out the revival of Portuguese literature that, 
while, towards the close of the sixteenth century, the 
rest of Europe was advancing in civilization under 
the influence of the Renaissance, Portugal fell back, 
and her literature became dumb. The establishment 
of the Inquisition was followed in 1540 by the in- 
troduction of the Jesuits, who speedily obtained 
control of the national education, and carefully 
checked intellectual development. The king re- 
ceived his reward from the Pope for these services to 
Catholicism ; he was permitted to unite the Grand 
Mastership of the wealthy orders of Christ, Santiago, 
and Aviz, with the Crown, and to found the new 
bishoprics of Leiria, Miranda, and Porto Alegre, in 
Portugal, and the archbishopric of Goa, in India. 
It must not be thought that the reign of John 
III. seemed to his contemporaries the era of decline 
it certainly was ; no king was richer, no people more 
loyal, and no man more honoured. His reign, like 
that of Emmanuel, is studded with great names and 
great events, and a casual observer could not observe 
the seeds of decay. Besides Joao de Castro, there lived 
then many great Indian heroes and warriors, such as 
Nuno da Cunha, Antonio de Silveira, Joao de Mas- 
carenhas, and Luis de Athaide ; it was during this 



184 THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL. 

reign that Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, 
conquered Ceylon, and Fernao Mendes Pinto paid his 
famous visits to Japan, and the present Portuguese 
settlement of Macao was founded. Still greater are 
the literary glories of the reign of the supporter of 
the Inquisition, for in it Camoens wrote the " Lusiads," 
Ferreira wrote his dramas, Joao de Barros his history, 
and Sa de Miranda his poems, all works which do 
not seem to mark a declining country. In art, and 
especially in architecture, the king showed no mean 
taste, and his palace at Thomar and the great 
convent at Belem show that he was in this respect a 
worthy successor of King Emmanuel, and that the 
Portuguese workmen had attained to no small degree 
of skill in decorative work. 

Yet in spite of these glories, the heroic age of 
Portugal was over, and in little more than twenty 
years after John III.'s death, the country, which 
had so long maintained its independence, was 
absorbed by Spain. This was to be expected 
from the decline the causes of which have been 
analysed, but the final catastrophe was hastened by the 
death of .the heir to the throne, Dom Joao, in 1554, 
which brought about on the death" of John III., in 
1557, the accession to the throne of a child of three 
years old, the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. Enough has 
been said of Portugal during the heroic age of the 
Portuguese nation ; it is now time to study the deeds 
of the men, who made the age heroic by their valour 
and daring. 



IX. 



THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA AND THE EASTERN 

SEAS. 

There is no subject that calls more loudly for an 
historian than the history of the Portuguese in India 
during the sixteenth century. There are Portuguese 
authorities in plenty, for, with a vivid perception of 
the picturesque, many of the greatest writers of the 
golden age of Portuguese literature devoted them- 
selves to this fascinating subject. Joao de Barros, 
the Portuguese Livy, and a contemporary of the 
great Indian viceroys, wrote a history of the first 
half century of Portuguese conquest in India in 
several volumes, full of interest and charm ; Fernao 
Lopes de Castanheda, Diogo do Couto, and Manoel 
de Faria e Sousa, all worked in the same field, and 
the lives of the two greatest of the Portuguese 
viceroys have full light thrown upon them in the 
Commentaries of Affonso de Alboquerque, 1 published 
by his son, and the beautiful Life of Dom Joao de 
Castro by Jacinto Freire de Andrade, which is a 
model of a perfect biography. Nor have the leaders 

1 These Commentaries have been translated for the Hakluyt Society 
by W. de Grey Birch. 



1 86 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

of the revival of the study of history neglected to 
treat this subject in a scientific manner ; many 
valuable monographs and reprints of precious docu- 
ments have seen the light within the last fifty years, 
and much material still remains undigested and 
unarranged in the archives at the Torre del Tombo. 
Yet this period, in spite of all the work which has 
been done upon it, still remains without an historian, 
fitted by a thorough knowledge, both of Indian 
history and of the state of civilization in India at the 
period in question, to draw out the salient and 
interesting points of the first direct contact between 
modern Europe and modern Asia, between the East 
and the West. 

Yet it is work which well deserves to be done. 
Prescott, the great American historian, has shown 
the interest attaching to the first conflict between 
Spanish chivalry and the Aztecs of Mexico and the 
Incas of Peru ; but when will an historian arise to 
tell worthily the story of the contact between the 
heroes of Portugal and the more civilized inhabitants 
of Hindustan ? Apart from the fascination of this 
side of the subject, there remains the fact that for 
a century the intercourse between Asia and Europe 
remained in the hands of the Portuguese. The 
history of the Dutch and the English in the Eastern 
seas has its own peculiar interest, but they did not 
find their way in that direction until the nations 
of the East had been for a whole century in 
contact with Europeans, and until their attitude 
had been greatly modified by this contact. Besides, 
the Dutch and English both went to the East 



THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 1 87 

as traders, and not as conquerors, colonizers, and 
preachers as well. Far different was the intention of 
the Portuguese. Regardless of the small size and 
slender population of their fatherland, they dreamed of 
nothing less than conquering the mighty empires of 
the East, and imposing Christianity upon them, if 
need be, by the edge of their swords. Grandiose 
as this intention was, and full of inconsequence as 
the idea seems to modern eyes, which have seen with 
what difficulty England with its teeming population 
has managed to maintain its hold upon India, even 
while it has discouraged proselytism and protected 
native religions, there is something noble in the con- 
fidence of the Portuguese warriors in their God, and in 
their belief that through their means He would spread 
Christianity throughout the East. For the ambitions 
of the Portuguese were not confined to India ; Portu- 
guese adventurers actually established themselves in 
power in parts of Arabia, in Burma, and in the dis- 
trict of Chittagong at the head of the Bay of Bengal ; 
Portuguese emissaries found their way to Pekin and 
Japan, closely followed by the missionaries of the 
Roman Church ; and it was while on his way to convert 
the millions of China to Christianity that St. Francis 
Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, gave up his life. 
And, lastly, it must be remembered at what odds the 
Portuguese fought and tried to proselytize in Asia : 
at many months' voyage from their homes and base 
of operations ; only able to reach their destinations 
after sailing in feeble craft round the hardly known, 
unexplored, and dangerous coast of Africa ; deprived 
of the modern knowledge alike of tides and winds, 



l88 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

and of £he means to promote existence in tropical 
climates ; they arrived amidst the hostile millions 
armed only with clumsy arquebuses and their swords; 
and yet with all these drawbacks they were victorious 
in many hard-fought fights against more powerful 
armies than their European successors in the East 
ever met. Of course there are many blots upon this 
noble history, tales of corruption and oppression, and 
of the preference of commercial transactions which 
made fortunes to the harder regime of honesty and 
uprightness ; but for all that the history is one marked 
by achievements of valour and adventurous daring, 
unmatched elsewhere in the history of the world. No 
wonder that Portugal was exhausted by her efforts ; 
the only wonder is that her sons ever did one tithe of 
these glorious deeds, or exerted themselves one-tenth 
as much as they did. This story of the Portuguese 
in India cannot be treated adequately in a single 
chapter. Only a resume of the very briefest descrip- 
tion can be given, but if it inspires any reader to go, 
for instance, to the history of De Barros, he will there 
find the record of many a deed which will justify 
these remarks and excite both his interest and his 
admiration. 

It was in the July of 1497 that the fleet of four 
ships, destined to double the Cape of Good Hope 
and find its way direct to India, set sail from Lisbon. 
King Emmanuel, who in carrying out this project and 
despatching this squadron was only fulfilling the 
plan formed by John II., selected for the command 
Vasco da Gama, a gentleman of his household, and 
son of an experienced mariner, named Estevao da 



THE VOYAGE OF VASCO DA GAM A. 189 

Gama, who had been the nominee of John II. for 
this post ; and two able captains, Paul da Gama, the 
brother of Vasco, and Nicolas Coelho, volunteered to 
accompany him. The perils and dangers of this 
famous voyage have been told in immortal stanzas 
by Camoens ; it is enough here to say that the 
Portuguese fleet safely rounded the Cape of Good 
Hope, and began to work its way up the south-eastern 
coast of Africa. The rulers of Mozambique and 
Mombassa showed no disposition to assist the Portu- 
guese admiral in his endeavour to find a pilot to guide 
him across the Indian Ocean ; on the contrary, they 
proved actively hostile, and the false pilot, whom the 
the chief of Mozambique had given him, under the 
hostile influence, according to Camoens, of Bacchus, 
who was fearful lest his fame as Victor Indicus 
should be surpassed, deserted the fleet at Mombassa. 
However, Vasco da Gama pressed northwards, and 
at the little town of Melinda, to the north of Zanzi- 
bar, he found a friendly monarch, who gave him a 
skilful pilot. But the perils of the expedition were not 
yet over ; it was the wrong time of the year for 
crossing the Indian Ocean, and it was only after 
encountering fearful storms that the Portuguese 
heroes cast anchor off the city of Calicut on May 
20, 1498, after a voyage of nearly eleven months. 

The India, which Vasco da Gama reached, was in 
a very different condition to the India of the Great 
Moghuls, which came into relations with the first 
Dutch and English adventurers. It contained no 
emperor, exercising almost universal sway, but many 
independent kingdoms. "An Afghan of the Lodi 



190 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

dynasty was then on the throne of Delhi, and 
another Afghan king was ruling over Bengal. Ah- 
madabad formed the seat of a Muhammadan dynasty 
in Gujarat. The five independent Muhammadan 
kingdoms of Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, Ellichpur, Gol- 
conda, and Bidar had partitioned out the Deccan. 
But the Hindu Raja of Vijayanagar still ruled as 
paramount in the south, and was, perhaps, the most 
powerful monarch to be found at that time in India, 
not excepting the Lodi dynasty at Delhi." x The 
ruler of the city at which Vasco da Gama first 
arrived was a Hindu Raja, who bore the title of 
Zamorin, a word derived, according to some writers, 
from the tradition that the first limits of the settle- 
ment were decided by the distance the crowing of 
a cock could be heard from the summit of the Tali 
Temple. But though himself a Hindu, the most 
important subjects of the Zamorin were the fanatical 
Moplas, the descendants of some Arab and Moham- 
medan settlers on the Malabar coast. These men 
had greatly extended the dominions of the Zamorins 
of Calicut and were the wealthiest inhabitants of the 
seaboard, for they held the trade of the Malabar 
coast with Aden, and therefore with the Red Sea, 
Egypt, and Europe in their hands. It is not to be 
wondered at therefore, that, though the Hindu 
Zamorin received the Portuguese navigator with 
courtesy, the Moplas showed the bitterest opposition 

1 For this quotation, as well as the most precise and exact informa- 
tion on the state of India during the Portuguese dominion, I must ex- 
press my indebtedness to Sir W. W. Hunter's " Imperial Gazetteer of 
India," new edition, and refer to vol. vi., article India, chapter xiv., 
and the articles on Calicut, Cochin, Daman, Diu, and Goa. 



THE RETURN OF VASCO DA GAMA. 191 

to him, and discouraged the idea of a direct trade 
with Europe, which would bring about their own 
ruin. This opposition prevented Vasco da Gama 
from carrying out his intention of leaving some 
settlers to form a trade establishment at Calicut, and 
after cruising about along the Malabar coast he 
commenced his voyage back to Europe. 

The voyage home was no less perilous than the 
voyage out, and it was not until the 29th of August, 
1499, that Vasco da Gama cast anchor in the port of 
Lisbon, bringing back with him but fifty-five out of 
the 148 companions who had started with him on 
his adventurous journey. The pious navigator at 
once went up to the church of Our Lady at Belem, 
where he had offered up prayers for help before his 
departure. His devotions completed, Vasco da Gama 
made his solemn entrance into Lisbon, where he was 
received with a burst of popular enthusiasm, equal to 
that which greeted Christopher Columbus on his 
return from discovering America. King Emmanuel 
took the title of " Lord of the Conquest, Navigation 
and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and 
India," which was confirmed to him by a Bull of 
Pope Alexander VI. in 1502, and he erected the 
superb church of Belem, as a testimonial of gratitude 
to heaven. On Vasco da Gama the king conferred 
well-deserved honours ; he was permitted to quarter 
the royal arms with his own, and was granted the 
office of Admiral of the Indian seas, with a large 
revenue to be levied on the Indian trade ; he and 
his brothers were granted the right to use the prefix 
Dom or Lord, and a little later, when the importance 



192 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

of his voyage became more manifest, he was created 
Count da Vidigueira. 

When the rejoicings were over, King Emmanuel 
determined to see what advantages could be gained 
from Dom Vasco da Gama's discovery, and des- 
patched Pedro Alvares Cabral with a fleet of thirteen 
ships carrying twelve hundred picked soldiers to 
establish " factories " on the Malabar coast, for the 
collection of the most valuable products of the East, 
which should be conveyed to Portugal in royal ships 
every year. And here it is necessary to again insist 
upon the fact, that the Portuguese trade with India 
was a royal monopoly. The Portuguese establishments 
in India were not, as was the case with regard to Hol- 
land, England, and France in later years, formed by 
companies of private merchants, who looked upon the 
Indian trade as a speculation, but were royal factories, 
managed by royal officers, and served by royal fleets. 
Private trade was impossible, and not even dreamed 
of, because it was considered necessary that these 
factories should be defended by bodies of troops and 
served by powerful fleets, which cost, an amount of 
money no private firm could furnish. But these 
royal factories were intended not only to establish and 
guard trade, but also to spread Christianity, and for 
that purpose they included from the first not only 
soldiers, but missionary priests. Pedro Alvares 
Cabral was driven by stress of weather to the coast 
of Brazil, of which country he took possession in the 
name of his sovereign, and then proceeded to follow 
the course laid down by Vasco da Gama, and reached 
"Calicut in safety. He immediately established a 



THE FIRST ESTABLISHMENTS IN INDIA. 1 93 

factory at that place, but the Moplas showed the 
same unfriendly disposition which they had before ex- 
hibited towards Vasco da Gama, and at once murdered 
all the colonists. Cabral then cannonaded Calicut, 
and proceeded to Cannanore and Cochin, at both 
of which places he was favourably received, for 
their Hindu Rajas were unwilling tributaries to 
the Zamorin of Calicut and his Moplas ; and after 
purchasing great stores of pepper and other In- 
dian commodities, the Portuguese admiral left estab- 
lishments at these two places to open up trade, 
and returned home. In 1502, Vasco da Gama 
arrived for the second time on the Malabar coast 
with twenty ships, and after again cannonading 
Calicut, and destroying all the shipping in the port, 
he strengthened the factories at Cochin and Can- 
nanore and returned. On his departure, Vincente 
Sodre, one of the officers he had left, deserted the 
factory and set up as a pirate in the Arabian seas, 
being the first of those Portuguese adventurers in 
the Eastern seas whose stories read like romances. 
In 1503, three separate Portuguese squadrons under 
the command respectively of Francisco de Alboquer- 
que, ArTonso de Alboquerque, and Antonio de Sal- 
danha, reached India, and the first of these captains 
gave effective assistance to the Raja of Cochin, who 
had been attacked by the Zamorin for his welcome 
of the Portuguese, and was being besieged in the 
island of Vypin. Francisco de Alboquerque was 
only just in time, and to guard against such extremi- 
ties in the future, he built a strong fort, guarded with 
artillery, at Cochin, and when the three captains de- 




alboquerque. (From the Sloane MS. igy,/oh'o n.) 



*95 

parted they left there a garrison of nine hundred men, 
under the command of Duarte Pacheco. This officer 
performed the first great feat of arms which illustrated 
the history of the Portuguese in India ; with his small 
garrison, enfeebled by sickness, he not only drove 
back the great army which the Zamorin sent against 
Cochin, but utterly defeated five thousand of his best 
troops in open battle. This victory established the 
reputation of the Portuguese in India as soldiers ; the 
factories now found no difficulty in purchasing all the 
goods they needed at a reasonable price ; and what 
was more important, the fame of Pacheco spread 
abroad, and he was able to send envoys into the 
interior of India, who were everywhere favourably 
received, and generally returned laden with presents. 
Pacheco's success inspired the Portuguese monarch 
with the idea that he could not only absorb the 
Indian trade, but could conquer India, and Emmanuel 
decided that a powerful imperial government should 
be established on the Malabar coast, instead of 
isolated factories. 

The first viceroy he selected was Dom Francisco de 
Almeida, a Portuguese nobleman of high rank, who 
had learned the art of war under Gonsalvo da Cordova, 
better known in Spanish history as the " Great 
Captain," and had been a favourite of King John II. 
The fleet with which he set sail from Belem on March 
25, 1505, consisted of sixteen ships and sixteen cara- 
vels, and carried fifteen hundred soldiers besides many 
officials for the new establishment. On his way to 
India, Dom Francisco de Almeida occupied Quiloa 
and Mombassa on the south-eastern coast of Africa, 



ig6 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

and erected forts, which should make them safe 
resting-places for the Portuguese fleets ; and on his 
arrival at Cannanore on October 22nd he took the 
title of Viceroy of Cochin, Cannanore, and Quilon. 
The great Portuguese nobleman looked upon the 
state of affairs in India from a very different point of 
view to Cabral, Vasco da Gama, and Pacheco ; he 
did not regard commerce as the sole purpose of the 
establishments of the Portuguese in the East, and in- 
stead of trying to open up trade as Pacheco had done, 
and only defending himself when attacked, the first 
viceroy adopted a vigorous policy of active interfer- 
ence with native states, proselytism, and offensive 
war. He established his seat of government at 
Cochin, and sent forth expeditions along the 
Malabar coast, which generally came to blows with 
the Mohammedan merchants, who saw with dismay 
that their commerce with Egypt by way of the Red 
Sea would soon disappear. His chief commander 
was his son, Dom Lourenco de Almeida, a boy in 
years, but a hero in the fight. On October 19, 1505, 
young Lourenco cannonaded and nearly destroyed 
Conlao, the modern Quilon ; on March 18, 1506, he 
almost annihilated the fleet of the Zamorin of Calicut, 
consisting of eighty-four ships and one hundred and 
twenty prahs, with only eleven vessels, and received a 
check at Dabul, the modern Dabhol ; in 1507, he dis- 
covered the Maldive Islands, and with Tristao da 
Cunha sacked the port of Ponani, and in 1 508 the young 
hero was killed at Chaul in a combat against an Egyp- 
tian fleet, which had been sent by the Mamluk. Sultan 
to expel the Portuguese from India under the com- 



ALMEIDA S VICTORY OFF DIU. IQJ 

mand of an admiral named Emir Hoseyn. But a 
more serious danger was impending ; the wrath of the 
Mohammedan sovereigns, whose domains extended 
to the north-western coasts, and especially of the 
kings of Bijapur and Gujarat, was aroused by these 
aggressions, and they collected powerful fleets and 
joined Emir Hoseyn. The Viceroy of India, nothing 
daunted, sailed northward to avenge his son's death, 
with only nineteen ships, and after sacking Dabhol 
he entirely defeated the Mohammedan fleet of more 
than one hundred ships, on February 2, 1509, off the 
island of Diu. While the first Portuguese Viceroy 
was undertaking these operations, his appointed suc- 
cessor, Affonso de Alboquerque, with whom he had 
quarrelled, and the admiral Tristao da Cunha were 
exploring the Indian Ocean, and after stopping some 
time at the island of Socotra, they stormed the 
wealthy city of Ormuz at the mouth of the Persian 
Gulf. These explorations had the most important re- 
sults, and Affonso de Alboquerque was glad, when the 
appointed time arrived for him at the close of 1509, to 
take over the government of India as second viceroy. 
Affonso de Alboquerque was the greatest of all the 
Portuguese heroes who served in India, and he owes 
his fame not only to his feats of arms, numerous and 
glorious as they were, but to the wisdom and justice 
of his civil government, and to the fact that he was a 
great and a far-seeing statesman, as well as a brave 
warrior. Like Francisco de Almeida, he had been 
a favourite and an intimate friend of King John II., 
in whose reign he filled the Court office of Master 
of the Horse. He commenced his viceroyalty by 



198 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

r 

making a fresh attack on Calicut, the headquarters 
of the Moplas. He succeeded in burning the palace 
of the Zamorin and wrecking the city, but the popu- 
lace then arose in force and drove the Portuguese 
back to their ships, killing many of their leaders, 
including the Marshal of Portugal, Dom Fernando 
Coutinho. Alboquerque then proceeded to take a 
more important step ; he soon perceived that Cochin 
was too far south to serve as the headquarters of 
either the trade or the political dominion of the 
Portuguese, and that it was necessary to occupy 
some more central spot on the Malabar coast for a 
capital. The place he selected was Goa, a port in 
the possession of the Mohammedan king of Bijapur. 
Thither he sailed with twenty ships and twelve hun- 
dred men ; and one feat of arms, performed by Antonio 
de Noronha, at Panjim, at the mouth of the river Goa, 
where the present capital of the Portuguese posses- 
sions in India is situated, laid the city open to him. 
The citizens, who had been discouraged by the pro- 
phecies of a holy mendicant that they were about to 
be conquered by a foreign people from a distant land, 
surrendered at once ; eight leading men gave Albo- 
querque the keys of the gates, and the Portuguese 
viceroy entered the city in triumph on February 17, 
15 10. But he did not hold it long, for on August 15th, 
Yusuf Adil Shah, King of Bijapur, recaptured the 
city after fierce fighting. Alboquerque did not 
despair ; he received reinforcements from Portugal, 
and on November 25th, he carried the city by storm, 
slaying over two thousand Mohammedans, and firmly 
established himself there. 



THE VICEROY ALTY OF ALBOQUERQUE. I99 

But Alboquerque was not satisfied with conquering 
an appropriate capital for Portuguese India, he de- 
termined to make his country supreme throughout 
the Eastern seas. With this idea he undertook two 
famous expeditions to the east and to the west. The 
first Portuguese settlers upon the Malabar coast had 
been told by the native traders that spices and other 
produce of Asia could be obtained more cheaply further 
to the east, and these stories had been repeated to 
King Emmanuel, who determined to send an expe- 
dition to these " Spice Islands," under the command 
of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. This captain reached 
the Malabar coast in safety, and was favourably re- 
ceived by the Viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, who 
found an experienced pilot for him, and gave him 
sixty well-seasoned soldiers, under the command of 
Francisco Serrao, and Fernao de Magalhaes, who, 
under the name of Magellan, was to leave his mark 
upon the map of the world. The pilot led the fleet 
skilfully, and on September 11, 1509, Diogo Lopes 
de Sequeira anchored off the city of Malacca, where 
the Malay chief permitted him to found a factory. On 
his return to India, he reported to Alboquerque on the 
wealth of Malacca and of the island of Sumatra, and 
that spices were both better and cheaper there than 
in India. The great viceroy at once determined to 
see these rich countries for himself, and, after some 
sharp fighting with the Malays, he established the 
Portuguese power in that quarter upon a firm basis, 
and returned to Goa. His expedition westwards was 
not so successful. During his former campaign, in 
which he had taken Ormuz, he had observed that 



200 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

the greater portion of the Asiatic trade, which still 
followed the old routes, went not by way of the 
Persian Gulf, but by way of the Red Sea, and that 
the great entrepdt was the city of Aden. In order to 
secure the entire monopoly of the Eastern trade for 
the new Portuguese route round the Cape of Good 
Hope, it was therefore necessary to occupy Aden. 
With this intention Alboquerque sailed westwards in 
15 13, and on Easter Eve he arrived before the city. 
On Easter Day he attacked it fiercely with a force of 
over two thousand soldiers ; but he failed, and had to 
content himself with destroying the shipping in the 
port. He then explored the Red Sea, and returned 
to Goa for the last time. 

It has been said that Alboquerque was a great 
statesman as well as a great warrior, and no better 
proof of this can be adduced than his treatment of 
the Hindu princes. He alone of Portuguese viceroys 
recognized the fact the Hindus did not take kindly 
to the rule of the Mohammedans, and that they 
would much sooner be ruled by Europeans, if they 
were only just and fair-minded. It was from Moham- 
medan powers that the Portuguese had met with such 
bitter opposition, from the Moplas of Calicut and the 
King of Bijapur, and if the successors of Alboquerque 
had but grasped this fact they would have found little 
difficulty in leading the Hindus against the votaries 
of Islam. They would then have waged against 
Mohammedans in India the same relentless war 
that their ancestors had waged in their own father- 
land, and might have established a protectorate over 
the Hindus without much difficulty. The wide- 



DEATH OF ALBOQUERQUE. 201 

minded tolerance which Alboquerque showed in 
his communications with the Hindu princes, he 
also showed in the details of administration. He 
maintained the village system, which he found 
existing in Goa at the time of his conquest, and 
avoided all appearance of fresh taxation with as 
much care as a modern English collector. The ex- 
pedition to Aden was the last he ever undertook, and 
on December 16, 15 15, this truly great man died at 
Goa, and was buried there by his own directions in 
the costume of a commander of the Order of Santi- 
ago. " In such veneration was his memory held, that 
the Hindus, and even the Mohammedans, were wont 
to repair to his tomb, and there utter their complaints, 
as if in the presence of his shade, and call upon God 
to deliver them from the tyranny of his successors." * 
What better proof of the qualities which have won 
for him the title of Alboquerque " the Great " could 
be given than this ! 

The tyranny of the successors of Alboquerque has 
been much exaggerated, and in recording the accu- 
sations against them it must be remembered that 
the Portuguese viceroys and governors were re- 
garded at home as being placed in power for two 
reasons, the one to send home yearly large fleets 
laden with the commodities of Asia, purchased at 
such a low price as to afford the king a handsome 
profit for his treasury, and the other to propagate the 
Christian faith. Neither of these causes for the 
Portuguese dominion were likely to be regarded as 
satisfactory by the natives of India. The orders of 

1 Hunter's "Imperial Gazetteer of India," vol. vi., article India, p. 360. 




kZC Jl/va j-cufc. O/iJyi. in 7y/uRey. An.1774. 

ALBOQUERQUE. {After the Engraving by Silva.) 



THE PORTUGUESE RULE IN INDIA. 203 

the Directors of the English East India Company to 
Warren Hastings, to take care that they should have 
good dividends to declare in England, were not more 
imperative than the orders of King Emmanuel and 
King John III. to the Portuguese governors, that fleets 
heavily laden with Asiatic goods should be despatched 
to Lisbon without their demanding any money from 
home for their purchases. This of itself was enough 
to make the demands of the Portuguese viceroys upon 
the natives oppressive, and it must also be remembered 
that men do not leave their fatherland to live in an 
unhealthy climate for their own pleasure, and that 
the Portuguese official was as much tempted in the 
sixteenth century to " shake the pagoda tree " for his 
own benefit, and to exert his authority to that effect, 
as an English civil servant in the eighteenth century. 
Yet this search after gain was not wholly sordid, and 
many gallant deeds mark the period between the 
death of Afifonso de Alboquerque, and the arrival of 
the greatest of his successors, Dom Joao de Castro. 

The rule of Lopo Soares de Albergaria, from 1 5 1 5 
to 1 5 18, was chiefly notable for his buildings at Goa, 
and for his success in opening up a trade with Ceylon 
by establishing a factory and building a fort at 
Colombo ; and his successor, Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, 
the discoverer of Malacca, and fourth governor, did 
much to increase the development of this trade. The 
fifth governor, Duarte or Edward de Menezes, had to 
meet so many difficulties, and to put down so many 
insurrections at Ormuz, Malacca, and Ceylon, that he 
begged earnestly to be relieved; and in 1524 John III. 
determined to send out Vasco da Gama again, with 



204 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

the title and powers of Viceroy, which had not been 
conferred since the death of Alboquerque. But the 
great navigator was now an old man, and never 
reached Goa to take up his office. He did, however, 
reach the Indian coast, which he had first seen a 
quarter of a century before, and died at Cochin, on 
Christmas Day, 1524. His body was buried in the 
principal chapel of the Franciscan convent at Cochin, 
but it did not long remain there ; for in 1538 it was 
removed to Portugal, and finally interred at Belem. 
Henrique de Menezes, who succeeded Vasco da 
Gama as governor, managed to put down most of 
the insurrections, and after a short interval of the rule 
of Lopo Vaz de Sampaio, Nuno da Cunha, the son 
of the great navigator, Tristolo da Cunha, succeeded 
to the governorship in 1526. His government was 
marked by more important events than any since 
that of Alboquerque, for he extended the influence of 
Portugal along both the Malabar and Coromandel 
coasts, and established settlements at Diu, off the coast 
of Kathiawar on the western, and at Hugh, at the 
mouth of the Ganges, on the eastern coast of India. 
The Portuguese had, ever since the days of Dom 
Francisco de Almeida, desired to obtain possession of 
the island of Diu, which could be easily fortified, and 
would form a good headquarters for their trade and 
political influence on the north-western coast of India. 
But all their efforts had been in vain until the year 
1535, when Bahadar Shah, the Mohammedan king of 
Gujarat, permitted them to build a fortress on the 
island, and garrison it with their own troops. This 
he did because he was being closely pressed by 



THE GOVERNMENT OF NUNO DA CUNHA. 205 

Humayun, the Moghul emperor, and father of Babar. 
But the Mohammedan monarch soon regretted that 
he had given the Portuguese such an important foot- 
hold in his dominions, and it was after a visit he had 
paid to Nuno da Cunha there that he was killed in a 
scuffle while disembarking from a Portuguese ship. 
His successor, Mohammed III. of Gujarat, regarded 
the murder of his uncle as a proof of treachery on 
the part of the Portuguese, and at once besieged Diu 
by sea and land. But the fortress was nobly de- 
fended ; the Portuguese women vied with the men in 
gallantry, and after being reduced to the greatest 
extremities, the commandant, Antonio de Silveira, 
beat off the assailants. The other important event 
of Nuno da Cunha's rule was the establishment of a 
Portuguese factory at Hugli, at the mouth of the 
Ganges, in the dominions of the King of Bengal, 
which for the first time tapped the trade of that most 
wealthy province. These great services during his 
long rule of twelve years did not protect Nuno da 
Cunha from malicious accusations being brought 
against him at Lisbon ; exaggerated accounts of his 
cruelty and of the corruption of his government were 
reported against him, and in 153B he was superseded 
yby a viceroy, Dom Garcia de Noronha. Nuno da 
Cunha died on his way back to Portugal, and the 
absence of his strong hand was soon felt in India. 
Garcia de Noronha, a former officer of Alboquerque, 
died almost immediately after his arrival, and his 
successors, as governors, Estevao da Gama and 
Marti m Affonso de Sousa distinguished their govern- 
ments by an expedition to the Red Sea, during which 



Z06 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

Da Gama was defeated by the Turks at Suez, and by 
the defeat of De Sousa at Tebelicavi. These checks 
greatly affected the profits of the Indian trade, and 
John III. determined to make a fresh departure by 
despatching to India Dom Joao de Castro, a hero of 
the old Portuguese type, and the intimate friend of 
his uncle, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja. 

In summing up thus briefly the history of the 
Portuguese in India, weight has been laid only upon 
its political and commercial aspect. It was for purely 
commercial reasons that Prince Henry "the Naviga- 
tor" had striven to find a direct sea route to India, 
and Vasco da Gama's success had at first been looked 
upon merely as opening up the Indian trade ; the 
idea of dominion had not then occurred to the minds 
of the Portuguese, and it was not until it became 
obvious that the commercial stations or factories 
would have to be guarded and defended, that troops 
were despatched as well as factors. The successful 
defence of Duarte Pacheco against the army of the 
Zamorin of Calicut, showed how easy it would be for 
the Portuguese to do more than just defend their 
factories, if attacked, and Francisco de Almeida com- 
menced a war of offence by attacking native poten- 
tates, who refused to allow factories to be established in 
their dominions. Affonso de Alboquerque originated 
the idea of playing off the Hindu princes against the 
aggressive Mohammedans, but none of his successors 
followed out his policy in this respect. It must not, 
however, be thought that the Portuguese had any 
idea of establishing such an empire in India as the 
English have built up during the last century. Their 



THE POLICY OF THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 20J 

great system was to occupy, by force if necessary, all 
important centres of trade along the coasts, and there 
to erect powerful cities and fortresses, whither the 
native merchants could bring down their commodities 
to be purchased and placed on board Portuguese 
ships for passage to Lisbon. They made no attempt 
to force their way into the interior, and only sent 
envoys to native princes to secure protection for the 
native traders coming to their ports. They occupied, 
indeed, small rural districts around their most impor- 
tant stations, such as Goa and Diu, which they ruled, 
according to the fashion adopted by Alboquerque in 
Goa, by regarding the village communities as units, 
and regulating taxation accordingly. If these facts are 
grasped, the tales of Portuguese tyranny and oppres- 
sion fall to the ground, for the only natives they 
could oppress were the merchants, who brought goods 
down to the ports, and the inhabitants who chose to 
dwell within the Portuguese borders. The merchants 
and traders did indeed suffer, because they had to sell 
their merchandise by a scale which cut their profits 
down much more than they relished, and the inhabi- 
tants of the cities were ruled as inferiors, who were 
bound to be subject to the Europeans in every re- 
spect. The Portuguese judges naturally favoured 
their own people, and thus in many instances treated 
the natives unjustly, but it may be pointed out that 
no merchant could be forced to come down to the 
ports, and that no native could be compelled to dwell 
in the Portuguese cities against his will. These con- 
siderations, joined to a recollection of the inevitable 
accusations always brought by a subject population 



308 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

against a race of foreign rulers, tend to prove that the 
accusations of tyranny and oppression brought against 
the Portuguese have been greatly exaggerated, and it 
is quite certain that the Hindus were quite as badly, 
if not worse, treated by their Mohammedan con- 
querors. 

In one respect alone they had a right to complain, 
and that was, that the Portuguese, not satisfied with 
extending their commercial transactions, attempted 
also to overthrow the native religions, just as the 
Mohammedans did. For the Portuguese conquerors 
were not only traders, but ardent Christians, firmly 
convinced of the truth of their religion, and deter- 
mined to spread it. The squadron commanded by 
Pedro Alvares Cabral, which had been despatched to 
India directly after the return of Vasco da Gama, 
had carried some Franciscan friars, who were left at 
Cochin, in 1500, to preach their religion. They were 
speedily followed by other missionaries, chiefly Domi- 
nican and Franciscan friars, who increased in number, 
after the capital of the Portuguese sovereignty was 
removed to Goa. Great convents arose there, and the 
missionaries began their labours by preaching in the 
neighbouring districts, which were divided into parishes 
after the European fashion, and regarded as ecclesias- 
tical units. The fame of the Goa missionaries was 
greatly increased by the discovery or pretended 
discovery of the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle at 
the spot, which had long attracted the common worship 
of Mohammedans, Hindus, and native Christians, 
near Madras, where he was reported to have been 
martyred. These bones were brought to Goa in 1522, 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES IN INDIA. 209 

during the government of Duarte de Menezes, and 
buried with great pomp in the sacred shrine in the 
Church of St. Thomas at Goa, where they remain to 
this day. These first Portuguese missionaries were 
delighted to find native Christians in India when they 
arrived, and to find them a powerful military caste. 
They did not at first inquire too minutely into the doc- 
trines and ceremonies of these Christians, who belonged 
to the Nestorian Church, and far from persecuting 
them with especial fervour, as was the case later, they 
regarded the very existence of these Christians as a 
proof of the vitality of their own faith. After the 
discovery of the bones of St. Thomas missionaries 
flocked in increased numbers to India, not only from 
Portugal, but from Rome itself ; and in 1539 Goa was 
made the seat of a Roman Catholic bishopric, and Joao 
de Alboquerque was consecrated its first bishop. But 
the greatest impulse given to the cause of the propa- 
gation of the Christian faith was the arrival in India 
of St. Francis Xavier in 1542, during the government 
of Martim Affonso de Sousa. This great preacher 
and great man was not long in making a deep impres- 
sion upon the natives of India, and the news of the 
converts he had made without the limits of the 
Portuguese settlements, attracted a crowd of followers. 
The Society of the Jesuits, of which he was one of 
the founders, paid especial attention to this field of 
mission work, and the progress of Christianity became 
more and more rapid. This was the golden age of 
proselytising effort ; the Hindus listened with patience 
to the Christian missionaries, and did not yet begin 
to persecute them, and the Inquisition which was to 




DOM JOAO DE CASTRO. 

• ; th, MS of Pedro Barrato de Rezende of the 
AfUr ""^S^IZuL mrllZoftH* Viceroy* at G~> 



THE VICEROYALTY OF JOAO DE CASTRO. 211 

bear so heavily upon the native Church of Nestorian 
Christians, did not inaugurate its forcible methods 
of conversion until the year 1560. - • 

The name of St. Francis Xavier suggests that of 
his illustrious friend, Dom Joao de Castro, who rivalled 
upon the battlefield the glories of Francisco de 
Almeida, Affonso de Alboquerque, and Nuno da 
Cunha, but who was distinguished above them all for 
the noble purity of his life. De Castro was the 
intimate friend of the king's uncle, Dom Luis, Duke 
of Beja, with whom he had been educated, and had 
won his spurs and the admiration of the Emperor 
Charles V., by his conduct in the expedition to Tunis. 
He had served with distinction under Garcia de 
Noronha and Estevao da Gama in the Indian seas, 
and on his return home had been employed in the 
difficult task of evacuating the various Portuguese 
stations in Morocco, which it had been decided to 
abandon. He was renowned for the purity and even 
austerity of his character, and it was for this reason , 
that he was appointed, in 1545, viceroy of India. 
The situation there was a difficult one, for the Sultan 
of Turkey had, it is said, at the request of the 
Venetians, who were disgusted at losing their profitable 
trade with the East, sent a powerful fleet down the 
Red Sea to exterminate the Portuguese in India. 
When Joao de Castro arrived at Goa, he heard that 
Diu was being again besieged by Mohammed III. of 
Gujarat. The news was true, and in spite of the 
gallant defence of Dom Joao de Mascarenhas, the 
besieged were driven to extremities. The viceroy at 
once proceeded thither, and not only relieved the 



212 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

fortress, but defeated the King of Gujarat in a pitched 
battle beneath the walls. This victory, the greatest 
won by the Portuguese in India, exalted the fame of 
the general, which was further enhanced by his 
annihilation of the great Turkish fleet After these 
victories Joao de Castro turned to matters of internal 
reform, and, by a policy which recalls that of Lord 
Cornwallis in Bengal in later history, he fixed the 
salaries of the various civil officials and tried to put 
an end to the system of corruption and peculation by 
which they had robbed the royal treasury and the 
natives alike. He looked with especial disfavour 
upon the loose and immoral life led by the Portuguese 
at Goa, and sternly discouraged their luxury, which, 
as he declared, could only be paid for by robbing the 
king of his dues. Unfortunately Joao de Castro, 
though he was to inaugurate reforms, did not live 
long enough to see them carried out, for he died in 
1548, in the third year of his viceroyalty, in the 
arms of his friend, St. Francis Xavier, and it is recorded 
to the glory of this knight of the olden type, that, in 
spite of his opportunities, he died poor, and bequeathed 
to his son only his sword, " ornamented," in the words 
of his biographer, " with a few stones of no great value, 
but with a glory beyond price." 

The immediate successors of Dom Joao de Castro, 
Garcia de Sa, Jorge Cabral, Affonso de Noronha, and t/ 
Pedro de Mascarenhas, found no great perils to meet, 
since the victory of Diu had terrified the Mohammed- 
ans for a time, and none of them left any important 
traces upon the history of the Portuguese in India. 
The government of Dom Constantino de Braganza, 



PORTUGUESE SETTLEMENTS IN AFRICA. 213 

a scion of the most noble house in Portugal next to 
royalty, marked a return to the system of Dom Joao 
de Castro, whom he imitated not only in his internal 
reforms, but in his gallantry in the field. He it was 
who took and occupied Daman, which, with Goa and 
Diu, remains to this day a possession of Portugal. 
He was still in office when the death of John III. 
left the crown of Portugal to a minor, and the great- 
ness of his country, and even its independence, was 
on the point of disappearing. 

But the Portuguese power in Asia must not be 
regarded as being confined to India, though Goa 
remained its headquarters, and the centre from which 
the homeward-bound fleets sailed. It will be remem- 
bered that Affonso de Alboquerque made expeditions 
both to the east and west ; and his successors, during 
the century of the Portuguese monopoly of the 
Asiatic trade, maintained and extended their com- 
mercial operations in both direction. But before 
touching on these extensions attention must be called 
to the care with which the greatest Portuguese 
governors kept up the establishments on the south- 
eastern coast of Africa. Mozambique, which still 
belongs to Portugal, Mombassa, and Melinda, were 
all fortified with the utmost science of the time, 
for the homeward- and outward-bound fleets always 
paused at one or other or at all of these places 
before facing or after meeting the perils of the Indian 
Ocean, in order to refit and take in provisions. The 
dangers of the passage round the Cape of Good 
Hope were also sufficiently serious to need rest or 
preparation, for to mention but two disasters, Francisco 



214 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

de Almeida, the first Viceroy of India was wrecked 
in Saldanha Bay, and died there on his way back from 
his command ; and a few years after occurred the 
wreck, imprisonment among the savages, and death 
of Dom Manoel de Sousa and his wife, which Camoens 
has immortalized in touching words. 1 More impor- 
tant than these African settlements was the city of 
Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which 
became the headquarters of the Persian trade with 
Europe by means of the Portuguese fleets. It has 
been seen that Aden was too strong for Alboquerque 
to capture ; one of his successors, AfTonso de Noronha, \/ 
was more successful in 1 551, but he only held the key 
of the Red Sea for a single year, after which it was 
recaptured by the Turks. 

Far more valuable was the settlement of Malacca, 
which was placed upon a secure footing by Alboquer- 
que. It became the centre of a great trade with Java, 
Sumatra, and the Spice Islands, and from it Fernao 
de Magalhaes and Francisco Serrao prosecuted their 
discoveries among the Moluccas and the Celebes. 
The history of this settlement is full of interest ; it 
was repeatedly attacked by the Achinese and other 
natives, and some of its sieges are as famous as those 
of Diu, though not conducted against such civilized 
opponents. But Malacca was not only the head- 
quarters of the Spice Islands trade, but the port from 
which explorations were directed northwards. It was 
from Malacca that Duarte Coelho started to explore 
the coasts of Cochin China, and made his adventurous 
journey into Siam, and from Malacca also Fernao 

1 Camoens, " Lusiads," canto v. stanzas 46-48. 



THE PORTUGUESE IN CHINA. 215 

Peres de Andrade started to open up trade with the 
mighty and populous empire of China. There can 
be little doubt, according to a most distinguished 
Portuguese historian, 1 that the embassy, which King 
Emmanuel despatched in 15 17 to the emperor of 
China, was caused by a knowledge of Marco Polo's 
travels, and by the interest inspired by his account of 
the far empire of Cathay. At any rate it was as an 
ambassador from one monarch to another, and not as 
a conqueror that Fernao Peres de Andrade was sent 
to China with letters and presents. And the very 
fact of this embassy suggests a doubt whether the 
Portuguese would have ever acted as they did in India 
had there been a monarch there of such power as the 
emperor of China was reported to possess, or would 
have been contented to be traders only. De Andrade 
safely reached Canton by way of Malacca in 15 18, 
but in spite of his letters and presents he was long 
detained there and not allowed to proceed to Pekin 
until 1 5 2 1. When the Chinese thoroughly understood 
that the Portuguese came only to trade and not to 
conquer, they permitted the new-comers to establish 
a factory, first at Lium-po ; and in 1549 at Chin 
Chee ; and, finally, in 1557, in the year of the death of 
John III., at the request of the Chinese Government, 
the Portuguese withdrew their other factories and 
established themselves in the island of Macao, at the 
mouth of the Canton river. Here they carried on a 
prosperous trade, and in 1583 they received leave to 



1 The Viscount de Santarem in his " Memoria sobre o estabelicemento 
de Macau." 



2l6 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

dispense justice within their island, and in 1587 were 
recognized as independent there. 

The first communication of the Portuguese with 
Japan is still more curious, and is connected with the 
history of one of those adventurous travellers who 
boldly traversed the most distant lands of Asia, 
long before Englishmen or Dutchmen had ventured 
to assail the Portuguese monopoly. Fernao Mendes 
Pinto has for generations been regarded as a typical 
liar, an accusation generally believed in England from 
the famous line of Congreve in " Love for Love : " 
(act ii. scene v.) " Mendes Pinto was but a type of 
thee, thou liar of the first magnitude." 

But modern inquiry has shown that though he doubt- 
less exaggerated, and drew strange inferences, his 
curious " Peregrinacao " or Travels, which was first 
published in 16 14, and was translated during the 
seventeenth century into English, French, and Spanish, 
contains essentially a true account of his adventures. 
His career is typical of that of many another Portu- 
guese adventurer in the East. He first went to Asia 
in 1537, and during his wanderings was five times 
shipwrecked, thirteen times taken captive, and seven- 
teen times sold as a slave. On his way out he was 
taken prisoner between Socotra and the Persian 
Gulf, and sold as a slave at Mocha, where he re- 
mained until ransomed by the Portuguese governor 
of Ormuz. After many daring adventures, which 
savour of piracy, he was engaged in 1542 in a 
strange expedition to Calempin, near Pekin, which 
he had organized to plunder the tombs of seven- 
teen Chinese emperors there. On his way back 



THE PORTUGUESE IN JAPAN. 2iy 

from this sacrilegious attempt he was wrecked off 
the Chinese coast, and set to work in repairing the 
Great Wall of China. While there he was made a 
prisoner by the Tartars during one of their invasions, 
and after being present at a Tartar siege of Pekin was 
carried away into Tartary. After various adventures 
he managed to get back to China, and he then paid his 
first visit to Japan. His account of the wealth of the 
Japanese islands excited the minds of the Portuguese 
officials on the Chinese coast, and a fleet of nine ships 
was placed under his command at Ning-po, with 
orders to open up a trade with Japan. Ill luck again 
pursued him ; eight of his ships foundered, and the 
one upon which he himself sailed, was wrecked on the 
Loo-Choo Islands. Undiscouraged by all his reverses, 
he continued to represent the wealth of Japan to 
his superiors in China and at Malacca, and in 1548 
he established a factory in the neighbourhood of 
Yokohama. Here he did good service, and besides 
opening up a trade in Japanese goods, he made a 
large fortune for himself. With this fortune he 
was on his way back to Portugal in 1553, when 
the ecclesiastics at Goa worked upon his religious 
sentiments, which, as in other Portuguese adven- 
turers, must have been very deep, though they do not 
seem to have influenced him in his dealings with 
Asiatics, and persuaded him to devote nearly all his 
wealth to the establishment of a seminary at Goa for 
the education of missionaries to Japan. 

The career of Mendes Pinto illustrates the extra- 
ordinary energy and indomitable courage of the Portu- 
guese in Asia, and it is a subject for wonder how 



2l8 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 

one little country, one of the very smallest of the 
European states, could produce not only great 
governors and conquerors, like Francisco de Almeida, 
Affonso de Alboquerque, Nuno da Cunha, and Joao 
de Castro, and their lieutenants ; and military heroes 
like Duarte Pacheco, Antonio de Silveira, and Joao 
de Mascarenhas, and their soldiers ; but also daring 
adventurers like Duarte Coelho, who boldly penetrated 
into the interior of Siam, and Mendes Pinto. These 
men, from the highest to the lowest, seem to have had 
unbounded confidence in themselves, and, as will be 
seen later, two Portuguese adventurers, with hardly 
any support, Sebastiao Gonzales and Philip de Brito, 
established themselves as practically independent 
princes in Arakan. It has been shown that this extra- 
ordinary energy and enterprise exhausted the kingdom 
of Portugal. Of the thousands who left their homes 
in Europe, but an infinitesimal portion ever returned. 
Not one of the early governors of Portuguese India 
died in Portugal until the time of Dom Constantino 
de Braganza ; they either died in India, like Albo- 
querque, Vasco da Gama, and Noronha, or on their 
way home, like Almeida and Nuno da Cunha. The 
drain upon the energies of the people was immense, 
and the wonder is not that Portugal was soon ex- 
hausted, but that it ever put forth such vitality at all. 
The greatness of the Portuguese in India was due to 
the courage and heroism of the Portuguese people, 
and these qualities they owed to a succession of 
great kings, who had trained the people to freedom, 
self-reliance, and constancy ; were it not for great 
kings like John " the Great " and John " the Perfect," 



THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 2IO, 

and great princes like Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, and 
Prince Henry " the Navigator," the Portuguese nation 
would never have done what it did, and the Story of 
Portugal teaches the useful lesson that a people, 
trained to lofty thoughts and a high conception of 
duty, will be sure to find scope for its energies, and 
exhibit the result of its training in noble deeds. 




X. 



THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 



THE history of the Portuguese in South America 
differs greatly from the story of the growth of their 
power in Asia ; in America they found no wealthy 
cities and civilized peoples, only poor natives, and it 
was no wonder that their chief efforts in the sixteenth 
century were devoted to the development of the lucra- 
tive Eastern trade and to Asiatic exploration. Had 
any one told King Emmanuel that the country which 
Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered by a mere chance on 
his way to Asia, would prove of more enduring value 
to Portugal than the settlements in India, that 
monarch would not have believed him. Yet such 
has been the case. Whereas at the present time the 
Portuguese possessions in Asia have dwindled down 
to the settlements of Goa, Daman, and Diu in India, 
and the island of Macao, which are of very little 
value to the mother country, the great republic of 
Brazil has expanded into an independent state con- 
taining fourteen millions of inhabitants, or more than 
three times the population of Portugal. 1 It is true that 

1 According to the estimate formed at the close of 1888, Brazil had 
a population of 14,002,335 inhabitants, while according to the census 



THE DISCOVERY OF BRAZIL. 221 

the governments of Portugal and her flourishing 
daughter across the Atlantic are separated,, and that 
they are politically independent of each other, yet 
Brazil still continues in close alliance with Portugal, 
and receives from the mother country the crowds of 
sturdy immigrants, who are steadily expanding the 
resources of the greatest country in South America. 
Brazilians are as proud of the great deeds of their 
European ancestors as the Portuguese themselves, 
and even surpass the inhabitants of the mother 
country in their admiration for Camoens, and the 
assiduous study of his works. The story of the 
settlement and gradual colonization of Brazil cannot 
rival in romantic interest that of the Portuguese 
exploits in Asia, but it is nevertheless instructive to 
study the slow growth of the colony which has now 
become a mighty empire. 

It was upon April 24, 1500, that Pedro Alvares 
Cabral, the admiral commanding the fleet which 
King Emmanuel had ordered to India, on receiving 
the news of the successful voyage of Vasco da Gama, 
caught sight of an unknown country towards the 
west. He had stood out to sea after passing the Cape 
Verde Islands, or, according to some authorities, had 
been driven out to sea by a storm and had not 
expected to see land at all, so that the discovery, 
which proved of the greatest value to Portugal, was 
the result of chance, and not of deliberate exploration. 
He was unable to land at first on account of the surf, 

of 1878 Portugal had a population of 4,160,315, in the Azores and 
Madeira 390,384, the possessions in Asia 847,503, and the possessions 
in Africa, 2,741,448. 



222 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

and it was not until he reached 15 north latitude, 
that he was able to find a harbour, to which he gave 
the name of Porto Seguro or Safe Port. He landed 
and took possession of the new country in the name 
of the King of Portugal, and after erecting a cross 
gave it the name of Santa Cruz, which remained its 
official name for many years, before the popular name 
of Brazil, which was given to it from the quantity of 
brazil-trees it contained, was adopted. Cabral found 
the country to be fertile and well watered, and 
inhabited by a mild and inoffensive people, who 
allowed him to explore a little, and to take on board 
fruit and water. He at once perceived the value of 
his discovery, and sent off one of his ships to Lisbon 
with information of it, and with one of the inhabitants 
on board to be taught the Portuguese language. He 
also left two of his own men in the country to learn 
the language of the natives and to explore, and then 
proceeded on his way to India. 

King Emmanuel sent various expeditions to ex- 
plore this new country, notably two under Amerigo 
Vespucci in 1501 and 1503, and the greater part of 
the coast line down to the River Plate was visited 
and mapped out by this industrious explorer. But 
neither Vespucci, nor the first colonists despatched 
from Portugal, reported the existence of more than 
a fertile country, and the Portuguese people being at 
that time in the full excitement of their first conquests 
in Asia, and the rich trade to be opened up there, 
paid but little attention to the new possession across 
the Atlantic. It was soon discovered that there were 
no wealthy cities or powerful dynasties among the 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 223 

inhabitants of Brazil, such as Cortez met with in 
Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru, and there seemed to be 
little prospect of a lucrative trade. So little was 
known, indeed, of the natural wealth of Brazil, that 
Spain, though by the Bull of Alexander VI. it had a 
right to all discoveries in that quarter of the globe, 
consented to give up to Portugal undisputed posses- 
sion of the whole coast line of Brazil from the River 
Maranham to the River Plate. 

Of the aboriginal inhabitants of this vast country, 
curious accounts were written by the first Portuguese 
explorers. They were reported to be partly nomadic, 
and to live chiefly on fish and fruit, and on the game 
which they killed in their forests with bows and 
arrows. They wore little or no clothes, and generally 
painted their bodies, and some tribes used to smear 
themselves with gum, and stick beautiful feathers 
all over them, which made them look at a distance 
more like great birds than human beings. They 
grew no corn, but made cakes of cassava root, 
and used to drink either the pressed juice of 
fruit or an intoxicating liquor made from honey. 
They understood how to spin and weave, and 
build huts ; they were great smokers of tobacco, 
and had some knowledge of the usefulness of the 
medicinal herbs and drugs which abound in Brazil. 
Their country, though fertile, seemed destitute of 
everything of value to Europeans, and it was at first 
thought that the discovery of Cabral would in no 
way contribute to the wealth or prosperity of the 
Portuguese people. 

So firmly was this believed, and so absorbed were 



224 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

the king, nobles, and people of Portugal in their 
Asiatic explorations and conquests, that for many 
years no attempt was made to form settlements in 
South America, and no effort to explore the interior 
of the continent. Two royal ships only for a long 
time were despatched to Brazil every year to take 
out and land there condemned convicts and women 
of bad character, and to bring back parrots and 
different varieties of wood, notably the brazil wood 
which gave the new country its popular name. A 
few families of settlers, partly from Madeira and 
partly from northern Portugal, also went out on their 
own account, and established themselves in various 
chosen spots, where they introduced agriculture and 
tried in vain to make the natives work for them as 
slaves. No attempt was made by the Portuguese 
monarch to superintend these infant settlements, or 
to decree any form of government for the stray 
colonists and convicts, who did what seemed good in 
their own eyes, and in many instances treated the 
natives with the utmost severity. While soldiers, 
governors, and officials were despatched in numbers 
to Asia, there was no thought taken of America ; and 
as one instance of the manner in which Brazil was 
treated, it may be mentioned that the importation of 
ginger from that country was prohibited in order not 
to infringe the Indian monopoly. 

This neglect suddenly ceased about the year 1530, 
when the rumour spread throughout Portugal that 
Brazil abounded in gold, silver, and precious stones. 
The natives had made no attempt to work mines, for 
they attached no value to these commodities, but the 



THE SETTLEMENT OF BRAZIL. 225 

knowledge that the precious metals abounded in Peru 
caused people to believe that they also existed in 
other parts of the South American continent. The 
discovery of gold in small quantities, and the rumours 
of an El Dorado in the interior, soon, attracted crowds 
of adventurers from ' all parts of Europe ; many 
families from Portugal were then encouraged to 
emigrate in order to counterbalance these adventurers, 
and the settlement of the new country was thus 
commenced in earnest. King John III. was as much 
excited by the news of the discovery of gold as his 
courtiers and people, and he sent over to Brazil in 
1 53 1 the first royal governor, Martim Affonso de 
Sousa, with instructions to assert the royal power 
over the rapidly increasing population of colonists 
and adventurers, and to arrange for the future govern- 
ment of the country. Martim Affonso de Sousa, 
who was afterwards Governor- General of Portuguese 
India, was a wise and prudent statesman ; though 
unsupported by any soldiers he made a sort of royal 
progress through Brazil, and he strongly advised the 
king to let the country develop by itself without 
interference from home. For government, he advised 
that the form of administration which had sprung up 
in the various settled districts should be confirmed 
and not interfered with. This form of government 
was simply the combination of all the inhabitants of 
each settlement into a sort of little state, which 
elected an officer called captain, who exercised a sort 
of patriarchal authority, and superintended measures 
of defence against either natives or other colonies of 
settlers. These captains held no royal commission, 



326 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

and imposed no taxes ; every man was able to do 
pretty much what he liked in his own house, and 
each settlement was ruled not by law, but by the 
general sentiment of the community. ' These captains 
had no authority, but what they derived from the 
willing obedience of the settlers, and every captain 
exercised more or less authority according to his 
personal character. Martim Affonso de Sousa saw 
the advantages of such a system for a new colony, 
and he advised the king not to send out royal officials 
from home whose authority would probably be 
ignored, but to confirm these captains in their 
authority, and that the settlements already made 
should be recognized as "captainships." This was 
accordingly done ; the king was only too glad not to 
have to despatch soldiers to America as he wanted 
all he could raise for Asia, and he sanctioned the 
measures taken by his representative. But he further 
subdivided the country into three vast " chief captain- 
ships," which he granted to Joao de Barros, the 
Portuguese Livy and historian of the Portuguese in 
Asia, Ayres da Cunha, and Fernao Alvares de 
Andrade, with instructions to search for gold mines 
and to exercise a general supervision over the 
government of the country. 

The colonists, w T ho flocked to Brazil from Portugal 
at this time, were of a very different type to the 
Portuguese who were sent to Asia. The latter were 
chiefly soldiers, sailors, and officials, despatched to 
India and the settlements in the East in royal fleets 
as servants of the Crown, who, while acknowledging 
themselves servants of the king, yet went to the East 



1* 



THE COLONIZATION OF BRAZIL. 227 

with the idea of making their own fortunes, and even- 
tually returning home to Portugal, while the Brazilian 
colonists went out at their own expense with their 
wives and families, and made their homes in their 
adopted country. These men were invaluable to a 
new country ; they went out with no intention of ever 
returning home, and with the power and will to 
labour with their hands. Throughout the sixteenth 
century a steady succession of Portuguese emigrants 
made their way to Brazil, either on account of the 
favourable report of its climate and resources, which 
they received from their friends or relations already 
settled there, or in order to escape the misfortunes 
impending on their own country, and more especially 
the heavy hand of the Inquisition. Mention has 
been made of the vast importation of slaves into 
Portugal ; this employment of negro labour threw a 
number of agricultural labourers out of work, who 
did not care to enlist as soldiers for the East, and 
could not make a livelihood in cities, and from this 
class many of the first colonists to Brazil came. Some 
weight, too, must be attached to the adventurous 
nature of the Portuguese people ; and this side of 
their character, which showed itself in individuals in 
the East, made men who loved a family life better 
than fighting find their way to the western continent. 
The colonization of Brazil was essentially popular ; it 
was not initiated by king, priests, or nobles ; and 
illustrates the extreme self-reliance and daring which 
made Portugal so great at this period. The one 
blot upon the careers of these early settlers was their 
treatment of the natives. Accustomed to the exis- 



228 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

tence of slavery at home, they tried to make the 
natives work for them, and this attempt brought about 
a bitter hatred between the aboriginal races and the 
immigrants, which showed itself in murder and 
massacre. The steady tide of emigration to Brazil 
did not at this time contribute to the wealth of the 
mother country ; on the contrary, it must be noted 
as one of the chief causes of that depopulation of 
Portugal, which has been spoken of as the germ of the 
decadence of the Portuguese power. 

It has been said that some of the emigrants from 
Portugal to Brazil were moved by a fear of the Inqui- 
sition, and hoped to escape from it by going to the 
New World. Especially was this the case with num- 
bers of the " novaes Christiaos," or half- converted 
Jews. This class comprised many families of wealth 
and influence, who, when they saw the rapid approach 
of persecution, removed en masse to Brazil. In the 
new country they thought themselves free, and were 
joined by many of their unconverted brethren, who had 
been expelled by King Emmanuel. As usual, even it 
not wealthy, these people were able to raise money, and 
they brought into the new colony, what it most needed, 
capital. Many of the greatest families in Brazil trace 
their descent from these laborious and hard-working 
colonists, who, as in every other place, gave an impulse 
to trade and industrial development unfelt before. It 
was owing to their perspicacity that the sugar-cane, 
the greatest source of Brazilian wealth, was intro- 
duced into the colony from Madeira in the year 1548, 
and they started the direct slave trade with the 
Guinea Coast, recognizing both the impossibility of 



THE GOVERNMENT OF THOMAS DE SOUS A. 220. 

reducing the aboriginal races into a state of servitude, 
and the advantages of negro labour. From all these 
causes, Brazil was growing a wealthy colony by the 
middle of the sixteenth century, possessing many 
well-populated and well-cultivated districts upon the 
sea coast, surrounding the various ports and harbours, 
where prosperous towns had sprung up, of which may 
be noted at this time Pernambuco, Tamacara, Ilheos, 
Porto Seguro, and St. Vincent. 

The prosperity of Brazil attracted the attention of 
John III., and he at last decided to establish a vice- 
royalty there, instead of leaving the colonists to 
govern themselves, and for the first governor-general 
he selected a nobleman of talent and experience, Dom 
Thomas de Sousa. At the same time the king re- 
voked his decree forming the three "chief captain- 
ships," and granted his representative full powers to 
arrange for a new system of administration. In 1549 
Dom Thomas de Sousa arrived in Brazil with a fleet 
of six ships of war, many officials for the new govern- 
ment, a strong force of soldiers, and the first contingent 
of Jesuits, who were despatched with the especial 
purpose of converting the natives. Fortunately for 
Brazil, Thomas de Sousa was a great statesman ; he 
made no attempt to enforce his powers unduly ; he 
carefully avoided interfering with the subordinate 
captainships, and left the system of local government 
established in each without modification ; he made no 
attempt to levy taxes or to interfere with the liberties 
of the people, and even avoided quartering his soldiers 
in any of the existing towns. He perceived that the 
weak point of the existing administration was that 



230 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

the captainships were too independent of each other, 
scattered as they were down the coast like little states, 
and he therefore determined to found a capital, and to 
establish a central government, which, without inter- 
fering with local liberties, should become a court of 
appeal, and regulating power over them. The place 
he selected for his capital was at the head of All 
Saints Bay, better known as the Bay of Bahia, where 
he erected the city of San Salvador. This town he 
made the headquarters of his troops, and the seat of 
the central government, and the Jesuit fathers also 
made it their point of departure. The most impor- 
tant question that Thomas de Sousa had to face was 
the treatment of the aboriginal tribes. The attempts 
of the Portuguese settlers to reduce them to slavery 
had been met with stubborn resistance, and a chronic 
war raged along all the landward boundaries of the 
captainships. The natives did not often attack the 
settlements of the Europeans, but they resisted any 
advance towards the interior, and small parties of 
Portuguese attempting to settle in the interior 
were often massacred. Dom Thomas de Sousa 
determined to check this continuous guerilla war- 
fare by both warlike and peaceful measures. He 
sent his troops, and led them himself, against tribes 
which had committed any particular act of atrocity, 
and punished them severely, and at the same time he 
gave all the help in his power to the measures of the 
Jesuits for civilizing them. 

The history of the Jesuits in Brazil is far more 
glorious if less interesting than that of the Jesuits 
in India. In America they had not to contend with 



THE JESUITS IN BRAZIL. 23 1 

the trained and subtle intellects of the Hindus, who 
were able and ready to meet them in the most 
abstruse philosophical arguments, but with simple- 
minded savages willing to be taught. The success of 
the famous Society was unbounded ; the teachings of 
Christianity did far more to quiet the aboriginal 
inhabitants than the swords of De Sousa's soldiers, and 
in a comparatively short space of time, either Jesuits, 
or native emissaries trained and taught by them, had 
penetrated many miles into the interior of the conti- 
nent. The rapid conversion and civilization of the 
native tribes produced many fortunate results : the 
great domain of Portugal in South America was saved 
much of the terrible warfare with savages, which 
marks the history of the English settlers in North 
America ; but, on the other hand, peace between the 
two races brought about intermarriage, and produced 
a class of mestizos, or half-breeds, which now includes 
about a quarter of the population. This conversion 
to the Christian religion was not hastened or in any- 
way assisted by the terrible power of the Inquisition. 
That institution, which did so much to weaken the 
influence of Christianity in India, by its auto-da-jes 
and its persecution of the Nestorian Christians was 
never allowed to take root in Brazil, and the atrocities 
of Goa were not imitated at San Salvador or Rio de 
Janeiro. Many reasons have been given for the non- 
establishment of the Inquisition, but the chief credit 
is undoubtedly due to Dom Thomas de Sousa, who 
was well aware of the services rendered to Brazil 
by the " novaes Christiaos " and other persons, whose 
orthodoxy could be impeached, and who urged at the 






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THE GOVERNMENT OF DUARTE DA COSTA. 233 

Court of Lisbon, that it would be impossible to estab- 
lish such a hated institution as the Inquisition against 
the will of the people of the captainships without the 
assistance of a powerful army, and as the king wanted 
all his soldiers for India, he gave up the idea of setting 
up an offshoot of the Holy Office in America. 

The establishment of the Jesuits in Brazil, the 
foundation of a central authority to superintend but 
not harass the captainships, and the pursuance of a 
steady and uniform policy towards the natives, are the 
points which mark the government of Dom Thomas 
de Sousa. That of his successor, Duarte da Costa, 
was less important than his predecessor's. He 
followed De Sousa's example, and the prosperity of 
Brazil became so obvious that emigration from un- 
happy and declining Portugal continued to such an 
extent that the Europeans in the colony doubled in 
number during his administration. One point of his 
administration deserves notice, namely, that he super- 
seded the old earthen fortifications round the principal 
towns by walls, and erected forts to guard the most 
important harbours, mounted with artillery. These 
precautions show that there was fear of foreign aggres- 
sion ; other European nations heard of the wealth and 
fertility of Brazil, and coveted its possession, and a 
systematic attempt to oust or conquer the Portuguese 
was made in the next century by the Dutch. During 
the sixteenth century, however, only one nation, the 
French, attempted to make a settlement in Brazil, 
and their effort deserves a brief r.otice. 

France, it is well known, was torn by religious wars 
during the sixteenth century, and it was one of the 



234 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 

Huguenot leaders, Nicolas Durant, Sieur de Villegagnon 
and Vice- Admiral of Brittany, who first conceived the 
idea of expatriating himself and founding a colony 
with his co-religionists in the fertile country of Brazil. 
The Admiral de Coligny warmly supported this scheme, 
and obtained leave from Henry II. to put it into 
execution. Three large vessels were accordingly 
chartered, and a number of intending colonists set sail 
from Havre for Brazil in May, 1555, under the com- 
mand of Villegagnon. They reached South America 
in November, and, without even attempting to obtain 
the consent of either of the King of Portugal or of 
the authorities of the captainship in which they landed, 
deliberately settled in an eligible spot, and for pro- 
tection alike against the natives and the Portuguese, 
they built Fort Coligny. Villegagnon immediately 
reported his success to the admiral, who sent on 
his letter to Calvin at Geneva. Calvin expressed his 
satisfaction at the notion of a Protestant colony in 
that quarter of the New World, and with his appro- 
bation a Genevese named Dupont, and two ministers, 
Richer and Chartier, collected together three hundred 
more French Huguenots and joined the original 
settlers in 1557 at Fort Coligny. Violent religious 
quarrels soon broke out between Villegagnon and 
Richer, and the newly-arrived colonists first removed 
to the banks of the Rio de Janeiro, and then returned 
to France, where they vehemently reviled Ville- 
gagnon. He returned to France to meet their accu- 
sations, and the Portuguese, under their governor, 
Emmanuel de Sa, took advantage of his withdrawal 
to demolish Fort Coligny and expel the French 



HOW BRAZIL WAS SETTLED. 235 

settlers. Thus ended the first attempt of the French 
to settle in Brazil. 

The Portuguese possession of Brazil was to be far 
more dangerously disputed by the Dutch in the follow- 
ing century, and the only reason why they did not lose 
their American, as they did their Asiatic dominion 
is to be found in the method by which the colony had 
been settled. What was best in old Portugal, not 
necessarily what was bravest, but what was best and 
most industrious had gone to Brazil ; the colonists there 
had been most wisely and prudently governed ; they 
had been allowed to develop free from all restrictions 
by the wise policy of prudent governors; and the 
result of this free development was that the 
Brazilians remained Portuguese at heart. They re- 
pulsed the attempts of the Dutch, and even, when 
able to stand alone, they preferred to cling to the 
mother country. Therefore it was that when in the 
eighteenth century the Portuguese possessions in Asia 
were only a drain on the exchequer of the kingdom, 
Brazil became the main source of the wealth of the 
Portuguese Crown. Little did Cabral, or King 
Emmanuel, think that Brazil would be a far more 
valuable possession to Portugal than Cochin, or Goa, 
or Malacca, and that it was so was due to the manner 
in which it was settled ; for colonies, whose prosperity 
rests on stout hearts and industrious hands, are of a 
lasting value to their mother country, while possessions, 
won and held by force of arms, are only of fictitious 
advantage and of transient value to the conquer- 
ing race. 



XL 



THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ — DOM 
SEBASTIAN AND THE CARDINAL HENRY. 

The germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have 
been already noticed in discussing the reigns of 
Emmanuel and John III. ; the country, exhausted 
by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and 
deprived of liberty of thought by the deadly influence 
of the Inquisition, was fast losing its old vitality ; and 
what Portuguese were left in Portugal were either 
enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to 
the Court, or in the lower beggars upon the charity of 
the King and the Church. The Portuguese of the 
upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese 
spirit of daring were in Asia ; the sturdiest peasantry 
of the lower classes had found their way to Madeira or 
Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves, subject to an 
absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by 
slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that 
keen observers, like the Dutchman Cleynaerts, 
perceived that beneath its appearance of seeming 
prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the 
core. Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of 



THE WEALTH OF PORTUGAL. 237 

the East ; it was from the Tagus that the ships from 
the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins of 
Bengal, the brocades of Gujarat, the " calicos " of 
Calicut, the spices of the " Spice Islands," the pepper 
of the Malabar coast, and the teas and silks of China. 
Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world ; the 
King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. 
But in spite of wealth and luxury and universal 
consideration Portugal was a decaying power, and a 
single shock was sufficient to strike the country from 
its place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation 
of heroes, and leave it defenceless against foreign foes. 
This shock was supplied by the African expedition 
of Dom Sebastian and its disastrous result, and 
Portugal was then an easy prey to the ambition of 
Philip II. of Spain. The reign of Dom Sebastian has 
therefore a pathetic interest to posterity : the romantic 
character of the young king ; his gallantry, and his 
death on the field of battle ; and the sudden end of 
the house of Aviz, which had seemed so powerful, 
have contributed to make this reign one of the best 
known to students of general history in the whole 
annals of Portugal. To contemporaries this sudden 
collapse of the kingdom, which a few years before had 
seemed so great, appeared nothing short of marvellous, 
and political philosophers were never weary of dwell- 
ing on this extinction and finding reasons for it. 
Rabid Protestants argued that it was all due to the 
Inquisition ; humanitarians agreed that it was a 
punishment for the high-handed conduct of the 
Portuguese " conquistadores " in the East ; short- 
sighted historians attributed it entirely to the defeat 



238 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

of Dom Sebastian in Africa. But more careful inquiry- 
has shown that the seeds of decline had long been 
planted, and that the fall of Portugal from her high 
estate was due to the exhaustion of her vital energies 
and to the rapid depopulation of her territory in 
Europe. No country can continue to exist and be 
a power, which sends forth all its best energies to 
foreign lands and foreign continents, and becomes 
exhausted at home ; it might as well be expected 
that a man should be vigorous when his heart is 
hopelessly diseased. 

Portugal was thus already rapidly decaying, when 
an infant of three years old became its monarch. 
Three times before in its history minors had 
succeeded to the throne, but in each case wise regents 
had governed the country, and the minorities had 
been marked by advance not retrogression. The first 
King of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, was but three 
years old, when he succeeded to his county ; but the 
wisdom of his mother, Donna Theresa, during his 
minority paved the way for his subsequent success. 
Sancho II. was but a boy when he became king ; but 
the great Bishop of Lisbon, by his self-abnegation, 
made his minority a triumph. Affonso V. had also 
been a child sovereign ; but his uncle, the great Duke 
of Coimbra, ruled so wisely, that the king's coming of 
age proved to be a disaster, not an advantage, to 
the country. But there were no such regents for the 
minority of Dom Sebastian : his grandmother was 
Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Por- 
tugal ; his heir-presumptive was his great-uncle Dom 
Henry, Cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of the kingdom. 



*— I~ 




■>< 



240 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

The youthful king had none to help him. His 
father Dom Joao, the only son of John III., had died 
fifteen days before the birth of his only child, and his 
mother, Donna Joanna, the daughter of the Emperor 
Charles V,, had immediately retired to Spain, leaving 
the child to the care of his grandparents. On the 
death of John III. in 1557, his queen, Donna 
Catherine, the sister of Charles V., assumed the 
regency in the name of her grandson. From the 
very first, the Portuguese people, from the highest to 
the lowest, disapproved of her rule ; she was so ag- 
gressively Spanish in speech, bearing, and appearance, 
and had so persistently refused to identify herself 
with her adopted country, in spite of her long residence 
there, that every one believed her to be plotting to 
secure the eventual succession of her favourite nephew, 
Philip II. of Spain, to the crown of Portugal. Pier 
bigotry and encouragement of the Inquisition did not 
tend to make her popular, and national prejudice 
declared itself strongly against her. Yet she was not 
a bad ruler ; she maintained the old servants of John 
III., and the machinery of administration though in 
many places clogged by corruption, went on smoothly, 
and she even managed to despatch a sufficiently 
powerful army to relieve Mazagon, when it was 
besieged by the Moors. Yet throughout her five 
years' tenure of power the queen-regent found herself 
hampered by the intrigues of the Cardinal Henry, 
who, as heir to the throne, thought he ought to be in 
her place, and at last she decided to give up the 
struggle, and in 1562 she retired to Spain. 

The Cardinal Henry then satisfied his ambition 



THE MINORITY OF SEBASTIAN. 24I 

and became regent of the kingdom, of which he was 
to be for a short time the unfortunate monarch, and 
during his rule the government of the country fell 
entirely into the hands of two brothers, who had 
made themselves very conspicuous in the intrigues 
which had led to the retirement of Queen Catherine. 
Of these brothers, the elder, Luis Goncalves da Camara, 
was an able Jesuit, who had been appointed confessor 
and tutor to the young king, while the younger, 
Martim, was prime minister, and carried on the work 
of administration during the regency of the Cardinal 
Henry. The two brothers were both men of con- 
siderable ability, and, though they made no attempt 
to initiate reforms or to check the decay of Portugal, 
they managed to conceal her rottenness as much as 
possible from the eyes of Europe. In 1568 Dom 
Sebastian was declared of age by the Camaras, 
though only in his fifteenth year, and from that time 
they excluded their former master, the Cardinal, from 
even a semblance of power. This behaviour did not 
ensure their continuance in office, for as soon as the 
young king began to take an active interest in affairs, 
he dismissed the brothers, and placed the chief power 
in the hands of an upright nobleman, Dom Pedro de 
Algagova Carneiro. 

The character of Dom Sebastian was one of the 
most important factors in bringing about the final 
overthrow of Portugal, and therefore deserves some 
examination, the more especially as the nature of the 
Portuguese monarchy was now entirely absolutist, 
owing to the wealth brought into the private treasury 
of the king, by the Asiatic trade, and his .consequent 



242 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AV1Z. 

independence of the Cortes. The young king was 
rather German than Portuguese in appearance, with 
his blue eyes and fair hair and his face disfigured by 
the Hapsburg lip, and in his nature there was much 
of the Teuton dreaminess and love of the marvellous, 
which impelled him to take part in rash undertakings. 1 
He was fond of solitude, and of building up castles in 
the air, in which he always appeared as a Christian 
hero exterminating the Mohammedans. For with 
his German dreaminess he united a truly Spanish 
fanaticism. His tutor, Luis Goncalves da Camara, 
made him a bigot, and his governor, Dom Aleixo or 
Alexis de Menezes, taught him to look upon warlike 
enterprise as the chief aim of a monarch's career, and 
the double teaching had inspired him with crusading 
ardour. He was not likely to be satisfied like his 
grandfather, John III., with showing his zeal for 
Christianity by rigorous orthodoxy and systematic 
persecution at home, but longed rather to unite war 
with religion, and to spread Christianity, like St. Louis 
of France, by his sword. To fanaticism and warlike 
ambition he added an obstinacy and imperiousness of 
character, which made him a tyrant. While training 
himself from boyhood for war, he determined to train 
his people also by issuing a sumptuary edict that none 
of his subjects might have more than two dishes, and 
those of the simplest character, for their meals, forget- 
ting that no decree could alter the daily life of his 
people. Lastly, with these characteristics he united 

1 On the character of Dom Sebastian, Sir Richard Burton has 
written some thoughtful pages ; see his Commentary on Camoens, vol. i. 
PP. 341-344- 



THE REIGN OF SEBASTIAN. 243 

a spirit of profoundest melancholy, which is evident 
in his portraits and in all his actions, a melancholy 
which seemed to presage his early and tragic death, 
and is indicated by the motto he selected for himself: 

" Un bel morir tutta la vita honora." 

Such a monarch was not the man to check the 
decadence of Portugal ; only a practical man, who 
should try to husband the resources of the nation, 
could have attempted such a task, and even he would 
have had difficulties to face which might well seem 
insurmountable. But practical measures of reform, 
such as a systematic attempt to regulate the ex- 
penditure of the kingdom, and an effort to check the 
corruption which had grown up in all departments of 
the state, demanded an amount of serious and pro- 
longed labour which the dreamy king was little 
inclined to bestow ; he thought he had done enough 
in issuing his sumptuary edict, and paid no further 
attention to the evils which were sapping the strength 
of his kingdom. For one measure, however, he 
deserves much credit. Though paying no attention to 
the slaves in Portugal, and regarding negroes as a 
race made for slavery, he yet under the influence of 
the Jesuits issued a decree of the greatest importance 
for the colony of Brazil, by which it was ordered that 
for the future none of the aboriginal Brazilians should 
be publicly sold or sent as slaves to work in the 
plantations, except prisoners taken in a just war. 
Even in the higher domain of foreign politics as 
opposed to internal administration, he made no 
attempt to watch over the interests of Portugal. 



244 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

His early marriage was a matter of supreme import- 
ance to the kingdom, for the only male heir of the 
house of Aviz was his great-uncle, the Cardinal, and 
the deaths of Dom Sebastian and Dom Henry with- 
out direct heirs would inevitably be followed by a 
civil war arising from the disputed succession. This 
consideration weighed but little with the romantic 
monarch, who after making a half-hearted attempt 
in 1570 to secure the hand of the beautiful Princess 
Margaret, sister of Charles IX. of France, the famous 
" Reine Margot," by the mediation of Dom Luis de 
Torres, abandoned the idea of marriage, and devoted 
himself to his schemes of fighting the Mohammedans. 
The times were singularly unfit for a war against 
the infidels. Crusading ardour had long been extinct, 
and though Pope Pius II. (^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini) 
had in the preceding century tried to form a coalition 
against the Turks, and in 1 571 Don John of Austria 
had broken their naval power at Lepanto, the ardour 
of the Pope and the navy of the prince were directed 
against the Turks, not because they were unbelievers, 
but because they were a conquering race and threa- 
tened Western Europe. The expeditions of the 
Emperor Charles V. against Tunis in 1535, and 
Algiers in 1541, were dictated rather by naval and 
commercial than by religious considerations, and John 
III. had acted with the thorough sanction of the 
Church, whose most humble devotee he was, in aban- 
doning the smaller towns held by Portugal in Morocco. 
Yet Dom Sebastian persisted ; he would be crusader 
rather than politician, and he was determined to fight 
the Mohammedans. His first idea was to go in person 



SEBASTIAN'S AMBITION. 245 

to India and place himself at the head of the 
Portuguese forces there ; but the minister, Pedro de 
Alcagova Carneiro, pointed out the difficulty of finding 
a regent to govern during his absence, and his former 
tutor, Aleixo de Menezes, turned his thoughts to 
Africa. He was fired by the fame of his ancestor, 
AfTonso V. " the African," and determined to waste 
what strength still remained to the exhausted Por- 
tuguese nation in useless expeditions to the barren 
regions of north-west Africa, where no possible advan- 
tage could be obtained of the slightest value to Portu- 
gal. Filled with the notion of recapturing the useless 
places which his grandfather had evacuated, such 
as Alcacer Seguier, Azamor, Arzila, and Cafim, King 
Sebastian in his twentieth year, in 1574, suddenly 
made up his mind to sail across to Africa. The 
expedition partook rather of the nature of a recon- 
naissance than of a serious campaign. The king 
spoke only of a visit to Tangier, and started off 
suddenly with his guards and courtiers from a hunting 
excursion, ordering the Duke of Aveiro to follow with 
a force of four hundred cavalry and one thousand 
two hundred infantry. With these troops Dom 
Sebastian made a few raids, and exhibited his 
personal courage by uselessly exposing his person, 
and he returned more bent than ever on a great war 
in Africa, which was to end in the Portuguese con- 
quest of Morocco, and the acquisition of everlasting 
fame for its leader as a brave " soldier of the Cross." 

Before entering on the history of this expedition, 
which was to end so disastrously, and strike a last 
and final blow at the declining power of Portugal, it 



246 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

would be as well to see how the Portuguese dominion 
in Asia had been faring during the regencies of Queen 
Catherine and the Cardinal Henry, and during the 
earlier part of Sebastian's own tenure of power. Dom 
Constantino de Braganza, the friend of the poet 
Camoens, had succeeded Francisco Barreto, the 
enemy of the poet, in 1558, the year after the death 
of John III., and had distinguished his viceroyalty 
by the capture of Daman. He was a truly great 
governor, although he permitted the Inquisition to be 
established at Goa, and his high rank gave him an 
ascendency not possessed by previous viceroys. His 
conduct was so blameless and his power so wisely 
exercised that the queen-regent begged him to accept 
the viceroyalty for life. He refused, and at the end 
of his three years of office resigned and was succeeded 
by Dom Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, a 
nobleman of high character, who died in office, and 
was succeeded first by Joao de Mendonca, and then 
by Dom Antonio de Noronha, who took the important 
city of Mangalore by assault. During his viceroyalty 
in 1565 occurred the battle of Talikot, in which the 
powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which em- 
braced the greater part of Southern India was over- 
thrown by the Mohammedan kings of Ahmadabad, 
Bldar, and Bijapur, and the way prepared for the 
extension of the Mohammedan power over Southern 
India. The next viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, was 
specially selected by King Sebastian himself in 
1568, and he certainly justified the choice of the boy- 
king and his advisers. The Mohammedan kings 
of the Deccan were full of delight at their great vie- 



THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 247 

tory of Talikot, and All Adil Shah, king of Bijapur, 
believed he could expel the Portuguese from his 
dominions. With this intention he collected a vast 
army of one hundred thousand men, recruited 
from various adventurers of the Mohammedan 
religion, and laid siege to Goa in 1570. The city 
was being ravaged by a pestilence, but neverthe- 
less the defence was a gallant one — the last great 
feat of arms of the Portuguese in India. The siege 
lasted ten months, and ended in the discomfiture 
of the besiegers and their final defeat in a pitched 
battle beneath the walls of Goa, when a victory was 
won, second only to that of Dom Joao de Castro at 
Diu, twenty-five years before. On his return to 
Portugal, Dom Luis de Athaide was received with the 
greatest favour by King Sebastian, who created him 
Count of Atouguia, and also by the people of Lisbon, 
who gave him the greatest reception vouchsafed to 
any Indian governor on his return for many genera- 
tions. King Sebastian then made an important 
alteration in the government of his Asiatic posses- 
sions. Hitherto all the petty governors from the 
Cape of Good Hope to Japan had been subject to the 
Governor-General or the Viceroy at Goa, an extent of 
command which caused many serious inconveniences. 
In 1 57 1 this vast extent of land and sea was divided 
into three separate governorships. The new viceroy, 
^ Dom Antonio de Noronha, was to be supreme from 
Cape Guardafui to Ceylon with his capital at Goa, 
while Francisco Barreto was to govern the south-east 
coast of Africa with his headquarters at Mozambique, 
and Antonio Moniz Barreto was to rule from Pegu to 



248 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

China with his capital at Malacca. Antonio Moniz 
Barreto succeeded as viceroy in 1573, and Dom 
Diogo de Menezes in 1576; and in 1578, the very- 
year in which King Sebastian met his fate, his faith- 
ful servant, Dom Luis de Athaide, became viceroy for 
the second time, and it is said that the defeat of his 
sovereign broke the heart of the defender of Goa and 
caused his untimely death. 

The expedition which was to meet with such a 
disastrous termination had long been contemplated 
by Sebastian, but its despatch was hastened by the 
state of affairs in Morocco itself, which seemed to the 
king most propitious for the success of his enterprise. 
The empire of Morocco had been divided between two 
brother Sherifs, as the rulers of that country were 
termed, in the early part of the sixteenth century. 
The younger of the brothers, Maula x Mohammed, 
beheaded his senior, Maula Ahmed, and was in his 
turn assassinated in 1556. The successor to the 
throne, Maula Abdallah, murdered two of his brothers 
and was succeeded by his illegitimate son, Maula Ah- 
med ibn Abdallah, the " Muly Hamet " of old English 
writers. At this, the brother of the late Maula 
Abdallah, Abd-el-Melik, commonly known as Muley 
Moloch, fled to Constantinople and, with the help of 
the Turks, ousted his nephew, Maula Ahmed. The 
defeated usurper then decided to make an application 
for Christian help, and when refused asylum by 
Philip II., of Spain, he appealed to Dom Sebastian. 

1 The word Maula, generally corrupted into Muley, is said by Sir 
Richard Burton (Camoens, Commentary, vol. i. p. 350) to mean lord, 
master, and leader. 



Sebastian's appeals for help. . 249 

This was the opportunity the young king had longed 
for, and when Maula Ahmed promised to hold the 
crown of Morocco as a vassal of the King of Portugal, 
Sebastian enthusiastically welcomed him and promised 
him assistance. The wiser statesmen of Portugal 
pointed out that the strength of Portugal in men and 
arms was in Asia, and that it was impossible to at- 
tempt such an enterprise as the invasion of Morocco 
without foreign help. Sebastian therefore sent em- 
bassies asking for help from the Pope, and from his 
uncle, Philip II. of Spain. Pope Gregory XIII. sent 
him an arrow of S. Sebastian and nothing else, but 
the arrangements with Philip II. were more important. 
The minister Pedro de Alcagova Carneiro was sent 
in person to the King of Spain to ask for troops and 
ships, in recognition of which Dom Sebastian would 
marry a Spanish infanta. Philip opposed the project 
strongly, but eventually promised five thousand men 
and fifty galleys to assist in an attack on Larache 
(El Araish), an offer which he afterwards withdrew, 
when the Duke of Alva assured him that at least 
fifteen thousand veteran soldiers would be necessary. 
In December, 1576, Sebastian had an interview in 
person with his uncle, when Philip II. again opposed 
his nephew's mad idea, and he is reported to have 
said when his efforts proved in vain, " If he win, we shall 
have a good son-in-law ; if he lose, a good kingdom." 
Dom Sebastian then decided to have all the glory 
of conquering Morocco for himself, and his hopes 
reached their height when Maula Ahmed managed to 
buy over the Kaid of Arzila and handed over that 
place, one of those surrendered by John III., to the 



SEBASTIAN'S PREPARATIONS. 251 

Portuguese monarch. Maula Abd-el-Melik, who was 
in bad health, tried to dissuade his rash opponent 
from attacking him, and in a letter pointed out that 
he was the rightful Sherif of Morocco. He even went 
further, and offered to the young king a district 
of ten miles round each of the Portuguese towns — 
Tangier, Ceuta, Mazagon and Arzila — if he would 
give up supporting the usurper. Never might the 
hackneyed line of Horace be quoted with more justice 
than in regard to the rash young Christian monarch : 

" Quern Deus vult perdere, prius dementat." 

No amount of opposition could check the king's 
ardour ; he believed himself already surpassing in 
glory both John "the Great" and Affonso " the African," 
and proceeded to raise money in every possible way. 
The treasury was nearly empty owing to peculation 
and bad management, and it was filled by imposing 
new taxes, by further harrying the converted Jews, 
and by partial bankruptcy. As the country was 
nearly drained of men the king had to hire mer- 
cenaries belonging to different nations, who were not 
properly equipped, and he never seemed to realize the 
difference between an expedition to take a sea-side 
town and the invasion of a powerful empire. If 
Affonso V. had met with difficulty in taking Tangier, 
how could Sebastian hope to penetrate to Fez, seventy 
miles up the country ? Dom Sebastian trusted too 
much to the promised help of Maula Ahmed ; he 
believed other cities would yield as quickly as Arzila ; 
and he had been thoroughly convinced by the ex- 
pelled usurper that his uncle Maula Abd-el-Melik 



252 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

was not only hated in Morocco, but enfeebled by ill- 
ness, and that his offers of peace were dictated by fear. 

The preparations made for the campaign were 
ridiculous in the extreme ; all the most experienced 
generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers were in 
India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted 
consisted of a few old veterans whose time had 
expired in Asia, and of youthful raw recruits. These 
latter were not in the least disciplined, and were 
officered by young courtiers, who may have been 
brave, and were certainly inexperienced. The king 
himself intended to take the command in person, and 
instead of making plans for the conduct of the cam- 
paign and looking after his troops, he spent his time in 
borrowing the sword of King Affonso Henriques from 
the convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and in having 
a banner worked in which the arms of Portugal were 
for the first time surmounted by an imperial crown. 
This banner was solemnly blessed by the archbishop 
in the cathedral of Lisbon on the 14th of June, and the 
king then considered that all was ready. 

On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail 
with a fleet of fifty ships of war and about nine hun- 
dred transports under the command of the Admiral of 
Portugal, Dom Diogo de Sousa, carrying fifteen thou- 
sand infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and 
thirty-six guns. Of this army only about ten thousand 
were Portuguese, the rest consisting of Spanish and 
German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine 
hundred Italians, under the command of a gallant 
Englishman, Sir Thomas Stukeley. This well-known 
English Catholic, who had been created Marquis of 



SEBASTIAN IN MOROCCO. - 253 

Leinster by the Pope, had been stopped with his soldiers 
by Sebastian while on his way to raise an insurrection 
in Ireland against Elizabeth. In spite of the 
desperate hurry in which he had been to start, 
Sebastian made no attempt to hasten his passage and 
try the effects of a surprise. He first stopped at 
Lagos in the Algarves, then at Cadiz, where he was 
sumptuously entertained by the Duke of Medina 
Sidonia, and did not reach Tangier until July 6th. 
He was there met by his Mohammedan ally, Maula 
Ahmed, who handed over his son as a hostage, but who 
only brought eight hundred Moors instead of the army 
which he had promised. Sebastian at first amused 
himself with hunting, while his opponent was concen- 
trating his forces, and then repulsed a few Moors in a 
skirmish, which he magnified into a victory. From 
Tangier he suddenly carried his army to Arzila, where 
he encamped beneath the walls and wasted time. 
At last he determined to hold a council of war to 
decide in what way the army should attack Lar- 
ache ; Maula Ahmed wisely suggested by sea, so 
as to have the advantage of a convenient means of 
retreat to the ships, but Sebastian answered the 
Moorish prince so rudely that he left the council, and 
the king decided to march by land. Even at this 
last moment Maula Abd-el-Melik offered to cede 
Larache to Sebastian if he would cease his military 
operations, but the rash young king returned no 
answer whatever, and the Sherlf of Morocco, finding 
all his efforts for peace repulsed, determined to crush 
the invader. 

On the 29th of July the march inland, away from 



254 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

the cool breezes off the sea, was commenced under the 
burning sky of an African summer ; the soldiers were 
soon maddened by hunger, thirst, and heat, and by 
the incessant attacks of the Moorish skirmishers ; and 
the army was dispirited before a battle took place. 
These miseries continued for five days, until August 
3rd, when the Portuguese had some success in a 
skirmish, and Dom Sebastian took up what he con- 
sidered a strong position near the little town of 
Alcacer Quibir, or more correctly El-Kasr el-Keblr. 
The position was from a military point of view 
utterly indefensible, for both flanks were exposed, 
and Maula Abd-el-Melik, who was now face to 
face with the Christians with an army of forty 
thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry 
saw that the Portuguese king was lost. At day- 
break on the 4th of August, 1578, the battle com- 
menced with some brilliant charges on the part of the 
Portuguese, but in a short time the wings of the 
Moorish army, which were entirely composed of 
cavalry, overlapped the small Christian army, and for 
four hours the army of Dom Sebastian was compelled 
to defend itself. The result of the continued charges 
of the Moorish cavalry could not be doubtful, and at 
the end of the four hours' fighting nearly the whole of 
the Christian army was cut to pieces. The Moorish 
monarch, Maula Abd-el-Melik, had been in the 
agonies of death when the battle commenced, and 
died in his litter from the exertion of trying to mount 
his horse at the first charge of the Christians, placing 
his finger on his lip as a sign that his death should be 
kept secret for a time. His rival, Maula Ahmed, was 



THE DEATH OF SEBASTIAN. 255 

drowned in crossing the Wed or Wady M'Hassan, 
and his brother, Ahmed ibn Mohammed, was declared 
king by the soldiers at the conclusion of the battle. 
The slaughter was terrible ; more than nine thousand 
Christians were killed, and all the rest, except about 
fifty, were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas Stukeley, after 
gallantly defending himself, was killed, with many of 
the chief Portuguese nobles and prelates, including 
Dom Jayme, brother of the sixth Duke of Braganza, 
the Duke of Aveiro, who had commanded the cavalry, 
and the bishops of Coimbra and Oporto, while among 
the prisoners were the Duke of Barcellos and Dom 
Duarte de Menezes, Quarter-Master-General of the 
army. 

Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved 
himself as a gallant knight, though he had not been a 
prudent general, and when the fortunes of the day 
went against him he determined to lose his life also. 
Many accounts are given of his death. One tradition 
says that he was taken prisoner by some Moors, who 
stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about 
him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in amongst 
them, and shouting out, " What, you dogs, when 
God has given you so glorious a victory, would you 
cut each other's throats about a prisoner/' immediately 
struck the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his 
rank. Another story is that the king met Dom Luis 
de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped around 
him, and said, " Hold it fast, let us die upon it ; " and 
that when, after fierce fighting, Brito was taken 
prisoner with the banner, he saw the king riding 
away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted 



256 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

that he saw the king making his way towards the 
river unhurt. According to the most trustworthy 
account, Christovao de Tavora, the king's equerry, 
showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with 
the fifty horsemen, who still remained about the king, 
when Sebastian suddenly dashed on the Moorish 
cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith, instantly 
slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed 
his master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherlf 
Ahmed ibn Mohammed sent out Sebastiao de Re- 
sende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to discover 
the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was 
brought in covered with wounds, which the Portuguese 
prisoners at once recognized as that of the ill-fated 
Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried 
in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in 
the following September to Ceuta, at the request 
of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to 
Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and 
buried with great pomp in the church of St. Jerome at 
Belem. 

It is important to lay stress on this subject, 
because for many years the lower classes of the Por- 
tuguese people refused to believe that their sovereign 
was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of 
a wounded noble on the evening of the fatal battle to 
gain admission into the city of Tangier by asserting 
that he was the king. It was this belief which led to 
the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, 
who played a part in the ensuing half century, and it 
had a still further influence upon the whole future of the 
Portuguese people. That the u Principe Encuberto " or 



ACCESSION AND DEATH OF CARDINAL HENRY. 2$ J 

Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, 
and the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful 
body of fanatics. Theirbelief was fostered by the princes 
of the House of Braganza as patriotic, and when- 
ever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the 
Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even 
at the present day they are not extinct, and Sir Richard 
Burton asserts that he has met with them in the 
interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave 
point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English 
House of Lords in 1763: "What can one possibly 
do with a nation, one half of which expect the Mes- 
siah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, 
who has been dead two hundred years ? " 

The news of the terrible disaster of Alcacer Quibir 
was brought to Lisbon by the Admiral Dom Diogo de 
Sousa, and occasioned the most passionate lamenta- 
tion. There was not a noble family which had not 
lost more than one of its representatives, not a patriot 
who failed to see that ruin was staring his country in 
the face. Deprived of soldiers, resources, and repu- 
tation at one fell blow, the Portuguese nation seemed 
stunned at the extent of its calamity. Even in India 
the same alarm was felt, and it is said that the brave 
Viceroy, Dom Luis.de Athaide, died of a broken heart 
at the news. The Cardinal Henry was solemnly 
crowned king, but he was a feeble old man of sixty- 
six, who had to be fed like a baby, and he was quite 
incapable of facing the situation. He utterly refused to 
acknowledge any successor, or to express any opinion 
on the subject, and when he died on January 31, 
1580, the Cortes which had been summoned to decide 



258 THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ. 

this important question was still sitting at Lisbon. 
With him ended for a time the separate existence of 
the Portuguese nation, and it is significant and 
interesting to observe that Camoens, the great 
national poet of Portugal, the poet who had im- 
mortalized its heroic epoch, died in a hospital of 
semi-starvation a few months before or after the 
Cardinal-king. It was well he did not live longer, for 
Portugal was to enter on the period of its " Sixty 
Years' Captivity," and her proud sons, who had the 
patriotism of a Camoens in their hearts, would not 
have been able to bear the burden of subjection to a 
foreign king. 




XII. 



PORTUGUESE LITERATURE— CAMOENS. 



It has always been the case in the history of a 
nation which can boast of a golden age, that the 
epoch of its greatest glory is that in which its literature 
chiefly flourished. The energies of a nation at its zenith 
cannot be bounded by the vastest schemes of conquest, 
but develop in other directions as well. It was so 
with Portugal. The age which witnessed the careers 
of its famous captains and conquerors was also the 
age of its greatest poets and prose writers. The 
establishment of the Inquisition soon checked the 
progress of Portuguese literature, but before its fatal 
power had time to thoroughly stifle free thought, and 
before the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and the annexa- 
tion of the country by Philip II. of Spain, Portugal 
had been able to produce many great writers, and one 
of the most supremely- gifted poets the world has ever 
seen, Luis de Camoens. 

The affection which the first princes of the house 
of Aviz had felt for literature, and especially for 
purely national literature, has been alluded to, and 
the natural result is to be seen in the works of the 



260 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the 
fifteenth century. The honour given by these princes 
to literary endeavour heightened its importance in 
the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard 
of education. The Portuguese were therefore pre- 
pared to take advantage of the stores of knowledge 
revealed by the revival of classical learning, and to 
profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of 
Aveiro, was the first to introduce the study of ancient 
Greek into the peninsula ; he had listened to the 
lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence, 
and after teaching "the humanities " at the University 
of Salamanca for about twenty years from 1495, he 
returned to Portugal as tutor to the younger sons of 
King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese 
pupil was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, 
who was one of the professors at the University of 
Coimbra, during the epoch of its greatest reputation, 
and is well known as the friend and correspondent of 
Erasmus. 

This university, 1 at which the most famous authors 
and statesmen of Portugal received their education, 
deserves some slight notice here. A university was 
founded by King Diniz at Lisbon in 1300, but the 
turbulence of the students, and their perpetual 
quarrels with the citizens, caused him to remove it to 
Coimbra, about the year 1308. During the fourteenth 
century the habitat of the Portuguese university was 
moved from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1338, from Lisbon 
to Coimbra in 1354, and from Coimbra back to Lis- 

1 For the early history of the university, see Denifle "Die Univer- 
sitaten des Mittelalters," vol. i. pp. 519-534. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF COIMBRA. 261 

bon in 1377. John "the Great" paid great attention 
to the university, as he did to every valuable institu- 
tion in the kingdom ; and in 1400 he entirely re- 
modelled it, establishing a staff of fourteen regius 
professors, four of whom were to teach grammar, three 
Roman law, three canon law, two logic, one medicine, 
and one theology. On this footing the Portuguese 
university remained until 1537, when John III., per- 
ceiving that the busy pursuits of a noisy capital were 
hardly suited to quiet study and the acquisition of 
learning, removed it finally to the beautiful city of 
Coimbra, and once more changed its constitution. 
In 1547 the king summoned Andrea Govea back to 
his native land, and requested him to bring with him 
other men of learning. Andrea Govea and his 
brothers were famous as scholars throughout Europe, 
even in the days which could boast of Scaliger ; they 
were all natives of Beja, and had been educated at 
Paris ; Martial Govea, the eldest, wrote one of the 
earliest Latin grammars, published at Paris in 1534; 
Antonio Govea argued the cause of Aristotle against 
Ramus, edited Virgil and Terence, and was held to 
be the most formidable rival of Cujas as an exponent 
of Roman law ; while Andrea had been principal of 
the College of St. Barbe, rector of the University of 
Paris, and afterwards principal of the College of 
Guienne at Bordeaux, and was termed by Montaigne, 
" le plus grand principal de France." * Andrea Govea 
brought with him to Coimbra, as requested, many of 
his friends and colleagues, including George Bucha- 
nan, the greatest scholar Scotland has ever produced, 

1 Montaigne's " Essais," i. 25. 



262 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

Patrick Buchanan, his elder brother, Arnoldus Fabri- 
cius and Elias Vinetus, learned Frenchmen, and his 
own countrymen, Diogo de Tieve, Joao da Costa, and 
Antonio Mendes. This brilliant band did not, how- 
ever, long remain united, for Andrea Govea died in 
1548, and his death was followed by the persecution 
of George Buchanan by the Inquisition. The illus- 
trious scholar was accused of eating flesh in Lent, and 
of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and after 
being imprisoned in a convent he was only too glad 
to escape from the inhospitable country. Though the 
death of Govea, and the persecution of Buchanan, 
deprived the remodelled university of its most famous 
teachers, there yet remained a sufficient number with 
such coadjutors as Jeronymo Osorio, Bishop of 
Silves, Andrea de Resende, and Pedro Nunes, the 
mathematician, to make this the golden age of the 
University of Coimbra ; and the instruction they im- 
parted profoundly impressed the minds of their most 
promising young Portuguese pupils, such as Ferreira 
and Camoens. 

The result of the introduction of a knowledge of 
the masterpieces of classical literature was bound to 
have a great effect upon the development of Portu- 
guese poetry and prose, but before noticing the result 
of that influence in the works of the " classicists," 
headed by Sa de Miranda and Ferreira, and in the 
epic of Camoens, it is necessary to devote a little space 
to the life and works of the greatest Portuguese 
dramatist, Gil Vicente. The versatility of the Portu- 
guese people during the heroic period is in no way 
better illustrated than by the fact that in their country 



GIL VICENTE, THE DRAMATIST. 263 

appeared the first modern dramatist, nearly a century 
before Shakespeare or Calderon. The date of Gil 
Vicente's birth is unknown, but it is said that. he came 
of a good family, and he is first found attached to the 
Court of Emmanuel as a dramatic author. He began 
by writing "autos" or religious pieces, resembling 
in their nature the miracle plays common all over 
Europe at the time, and the first, which attracted 
King Emmanuel's attention, was written to celebrate 
the birth of his eldest son, afterwards John III. 
Most of them are Christmas pieces, and the dramatist 
took advantage of the story of the shepherds watch- 
ing their flocks by night, to introduce the elements of 
what may be called pastoral comedy. Far more im- 
portant are his comedies and farces, which latter won 
for him the title of the Portuguese Plautus. Neither 
the plots nor the language of these productions are 
very refined, but they are full of dramatic vigour, and 
represent the life of the lower classes in Lisbon, with 
a vividness which strikingly recalls the works of his 
Roman prototype. Gil Vicente died at Evora in 
1557, the same year as his patron, John III., who, in 
his younger days, did not disdain to act in his 
favourite's dramas, and he has had no successor as a 
comic writer worthy to be named beside him, which 
proves once again, how thoroughly with the extinc- 
tion of the national greatness, the originality of the 
Portuguese people in every direction disappeared. 

Side by side with Gil Vicente must be mentioned 
Bernardim Ribeiro, the founder of the most national 
school of Portuguese poetry, that of the romantic- 
pastoral type. Though he showed the influence of 



264 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

the revival of classical learning in his style, he did not 
show it in his ideas, and the shepherds who converse 
in his eclogues, are as thoroughly Portuguese as those 
who appear in Gil Vicente's Christmas " autos." 
Ribeiro, like Gil Vicente, was a favourite at the Court 
of King Emmanuel, where he held the office of 
" Gentleman of the Chamber," and it is said that the 
lady for whom he cherished a hopeless affection was 
the Donna Beatrice, daughter of the king. A 
modern writer on Portuguese literature, speaking of 
Ribeiro and his works, says: "The rivers and 
mountains of his native land are the natural frame- 
work of a poet's fancy, and the revival of classical 
learning showed him in the Eclogues of Virgil a 
model, which he was not slow to imitate. His 
Eclogues, written in ' redondilhas ' (octosyllabic nine 
or ten-lined stanzas), are the earliest in modern 
Europe, and while replete with the charms and 
conceits of versification of the troubadours, show a 
truly poetic love of nature." * Ribeiro was the first 
true Portuguese poet, as Gil Vicente was the first 
Portuguese dramatist. While coming under the 
influence of the classical writers of Greece and Rome, 
he was not a slavish imitator of their master-pieces, 
and as the founder of the school of pastoral poetry, 
he holds an honourable place in the Portuguese 
literature of the heroic age. 

Ribeiro exhibits in his poetry the influence of the 
revival of classical learning to a slight degree ; after 
his time that influence increased, and his successors, 
who bridged over the chasm between Ribeiro and 

1 " Encyclopaedia Britannica," Art. Portugal. 



SA DE MIRANDA. 265 

Camoens, were thorough classicists, who imitated the 
Greek and Roman poets, not only in form, but in 
spirit. The chief poets of this classicist group were 
Sa de Miranda and Ferreira. Francisco Sa de 
Miranda was born at Coimbra, the Portuguese 
Oxford, in 1495, of a noble family, and he became 
professor of jurisprudence in his native town. On 
the death of his parents, he resigned his professorship, 
and travelled in Italy, where he studied the works not 
only of the great classical authors, but of the new 
school of Italian poets. He returned to his native 
country with a great reputation, and received an 
appointment at the Court of John III. He proved an 
accomplished courtier, but a quarrel with a Portuguese 
nobleman forced him to abandon his office, and he 
retired to his country seat at Tapada, near Ponte de 
Lima, where he died in 1558, while Camoens was 
still fighting in India. It was in Italy and not in 
Coimbra, that he learnt to study the great classical 
poets, and reverencing their works with the almost 
superstitious admiration of the Italians of the 
Renaissance, he dared not treat their ideas with the 
freedom of either Ribeiro or Camoens. Sa de 
Miranda devoted himself to the task of polishing the 
Portuguese language, and in doing this, he did more 
harm than good, for he introduced many Latin and 
Spanish forms of expression, which were not needed, 
and which helped to hinder the natural development 
of the national literature. He openly expressed his 
opinion that Spanish was a more dignified language 
than Portuguese, and many of his best poems are 
written in the former tongue, and are considered by 



266 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

authorities on Spanish literature to be excellent 
specimens of sixteenth - century work. Sa de 
Miranda's poems comprise imitations of many poets. 
He wrote eclogues in the style of Theocritus, epistles 
on the lines of those of Horace, plays based on 
Terence, and sonnets of which the form was borrowed 
from the Italian writers of the Renaissance. All are 
good and interesting in their way, but all are 
imitations, and the very best imitations of foreign 
styles can hardly rank a poet among the glories of 
his country's literature. Sa de Miranda's right to be 
included in any work on Portuguese literature is not 
due to the poems he wrote, or to his questionable 
improvements in his native language, but to the fact 
that he familiarized the people with the classic forms 
of poetry, of which a greater than he was to take 
advantage. Yet Sa de Miranda held a very high 
place in the estimation of his contemporaries, and the 
writers of the next century did not hesitate to rank 
him above Camoens, as being more " correct," a 
criticism, which irresistibly recalls Voltaire's avowed 
preference of Pope over Shakespeare. 

Antonio Ferreira, the second leader of the 
Portuguese classicist school, was like Sa de Miranda, 
a slavish adherent to classical forms, but he was at 
the same time a genuine patriot and a lover of his 
country, and a student of its past history. He, like 
Sa de Miranda, was of a noble family, and he was 
born at Lisbon in 1528. He was sent to the 
University of Coimbra, and studied there in the days 
of its greatness. His favourite teacher was Diogo de 
Tieve, the friend of George Buchanan, and professor 



ANTONIO FERREIRA. 267 

of classical literature, from whom he obtained a 
knowledge of the classics, not inferior to that 
possessed by Sa de Miranda. Even in his youth, 
Ferreira determined to devote his poetical talent to 
works in his own language, and he refused to write 
Latin or Spanish verses. He formed round him at 
Coimbra, a school of young poets, of whom the chief 
were Andrade Caminha, Jeronymo Corte-Real, and 
Diogo Bernardes ; and in 1557 he published his first 
volume of poems. This book established his fame, 
and on coming to Lisbon, he was appointed a judge 
of the Court of Appeal, and a gentleman of the Royal 
Household. He continued to write and publish until 
his death from the plague in 1569, the year before 
Camoens returned from India. Ferreira, like Sa de 
Miranda, was an imitator of the great classical poets, 
but he differed from his predecessor, in that he 
combined with this predilection, an appreciation of 
the national greatness. He wrote sonnets after the 
manner of Petrarch, elegies after Ariosto, eclogues 
after Virgil, and odes and epistles after Horace ; but 
his greatest work was a drama founded on the model 
of the ancient Greek tragedies. He selected for his 
subject the touching story of Ines de Castro, and the 
characters in his play are Ines and her nurse, Dom 
Pedro and his secretary, King Affonso and his three 
counsellors, a messenger, and a chorus of women of 
Coimbra. Ferreira's tragedy, though more fit for the 
study than the stage,remains to this day the finest drama 
in the Portuguese language, and stands almost as far as 
above other dramatic attempts of subsequent ages, as 
Camoens's great epic towers above all imitations. 



268 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

The history of the development of the revival of 
learning, as illustrated by the classicist school of Sa 
de Miranda and Ferreira, is of great importance to 
the right understanding of the course of Portuguese 
literature, but to the world at large its chief interest 
lies in its share in forming the taste of the one man, 
whom Portugal has contributed to the small roll of 
supreme poets, Camoens. His name is more famous 
than that of any other Portuguese, whether king or 
captain ; his great epic has been translated into every 
civilized European language, and is a greater subject 
of pride to his countrymen than their conquests in 
the East ; and no " Story of Portugal " could be 
complete which did not give some account of the 
poet who has given immortal fame to the heroic 
deeds of the great age of Portugal. 

Luis de Camoes, commonly called in English 
Camoens, was the son of a captain in the Portuguese 
navy, who had more than once experienced the perils 
of the voyage to India, and he was born at Lisbon in 
either 1524 or 1525. His family was noble, but by 
no means among the first rank of the Portuguese 
nobility in wealth or importance. He was educated 
at the University of Coimbra, before it had been 
revivified by the energy and learning of Govea and 
his friends, and there acquired a profound knowledge 
of the Latin poets, and of the symbolism and the 
legends of the Greek and Latin mythology. He 
seems to have left the university, which he ever 
dearly loved, before the arrival of Diogo de Tieve, 
and the foundation of what may be called the 
national-classicist school of poetry by Ferreira, and 







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LUIS DE CAMOENS. 

(From the Portrait in ll " Portugal Illustrated" 1829.) 



270 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

went to Lisbon to obtain employment. His poetical 
powers soon became manifest, and he had become 
somewhat of a favourite, when he fell in love with a 
great lady of the Court, said to be the Donna 
Catherine de Athaide, lady of honour to the queen. 
The lady's friends were indignant at the poet's suit, 
and at their request he was exiled to the little town 
of Ceuta, on the coast of Morocco, where he lost his 
right eye in a skirmish with the Moors. Wearied of 
this life he volunteered for India, the goal of every 
gallant Portuguese gentleman, and after serving a 
term in prison for a street brawl in Lisbon, he set sail 
for the East in 1553. In Asia, Camoens remained 
for more than sixteen years, and it was there that he 
gathered the local knowledge which gives truth and 
charm to many passages of his immortal poem. In 
1554 he served in the Red Sea and at the capture of 
Muscat under Dom Fernando de Menezes, and soon 
after his return to Goa he was ordered to take up a 
lucrative appointment at Macao, in 1556. Here he 
remained for two years, and the chief glory of the 
little island off Canton is the cave where he is 
supposed to have worked on his epic, and which is 
still known as the " Grotto of Camoens." From 
Macao he was recalled in 1558, when in spite of his 
poverty he was thrown into gaol at Goa for pecula- 
tion, and he was not released until the arrival of 
an old court acquaintance, Dom Constantino de 
Braganza, as Viceroy of India. With this prince, he 
served at the capture of Daman, and he distinguished, 
himself in various engagements under the next 
governor-general, the Count of Redondo. In 1568 



CAMOENS. 271 

Camoens determined to return to Portugal with his 
great poem for his only fortune, but on his way, 
disaster again overtook him, and in 1569 he was 
thrown into an African prison for debt, by Pedro 
Barreto, Governor of Mozambique. From this cruel 
confinement, he was released by some old friends on 
their way from India, who paid the debt, and in 1570 
he once more found himself in Lisbon. His reception 
in his native land was not encouraging ; he was not 
received at Court ; he had made no money in India, 
and had only shown a peculiar faculty for getting 
into debt and making enemies ; and he now devoted 
himself to the final recension of his " Lusiads." The 
first edition of the great poem was published in 1572, 
but the fame it at once acquired did little good to the 
author, who was only granted a pension of £3 8s. od. 
a year, equivalent perhaps to ^"20 in modern money. 
The later years of Camoens were utterly miserable ; 
poor and neglected, the arch-poet of Portugal had to 
subsist upon what his Javan slave could beg for him 
at night in the streets of Lisbon. He lived long 
enough to hear of the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and 
of the death of Dom Sebastian, but he was spared 
the pain of seeing the Spaniards ruling over the 
fatherland whose glories he had sung, for he died in 
a common hospital at Lisbon in June, 1579, or June, 
1580. 

These are the chief incidents in the life of one of 
the world's greatest poets, and they tell their own 
tragic story without need of a commentary. It serves 
no good purpose to speculate why Camoens was ever 
in debt and making enemies, or why he was neglected 



272 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

and left to die in poverty ; other poets and men of 
letters have shared the same lot. It remains rather 
to examine the causes which make his epic take rank 
among the works which the unanimous opinion of 
posterity has decreed to be immortal. Of his sonnets, 
eclogues, and smaller poems, beautiful as many of 
them are, there is no need to speak, for it is on his 
" Lusiads " that the fame of Camoens must ever rest. 
The subject of the epic is Vasco da Gama's first 
voyage to India and his return, an achievement of 
such surpassing difficulty, and of such importance 
alike to Portugal and to Europe, that Camoens per- 
ceived its fitness for poetical treatment. But the 
poem is not confined to the narration of the perils of 
the voyage only ; it abounds in long episodes, in one 
of which Vasco da Gama relates the history of. the 
Portuguese people to the king of Melinda, while in 
another a nymph gives a prophetic history to the great 
admiral of the achievements of his country-men in 
the land he had just visited. Sir Robert Walpole is 
said to have declared that he derived his knowledge 
of English history from Shakespeare's historical plays, 
and it might be affirmed in the same sense that 
many, if not most, educated people have learned what 
they know of Portuguese history from the " Lusiads." 
Such a knowledge is not to be despised. For, if the 
poet makes the mistakes of his era, and, for instance, 
identifies the modern Portuguese with the ancient 
Lusitanians, he manages in a few stanzas apiece to 
sum up with dramatic genius all the famous tales of 
Portuguese history, such as the voluntary surrender of 
Egas Moniz, the pathetic story of Ines de Castro, and 



" THE LUSIADS." 273 

the glories of the victory of Aljubarrota. This power 
of historical description is of itself enough to make 
Camoens the national poet of Portugal ; every old 
Portuguese family finds its name enshrined in some 
of its glowing passages, and the whole Portuguese 
people feel identified with the actors in the great 
deeds it describes. But Camoens is not only a 
national poet ; he is a hero telling of an heroic deed 
done by an heroic people, and this secures for him the 
interest of readers of all nations, who can appreciate 
true heroism. Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese 
sailor, but the results of his enterprise and success 
were to the advantage of all Europe, and the poet 
who sings of him deserved to be heard by Europe. 
If, then, the subject was fitted for epic poetry, the 
style of Camoens was equal to it. He rises far 
above the purely classicist school in Portuguese litera- 
ture ; he uses the names of the Roman gods, and 
narrates their councils and their intervention in mun- 
dane affairs with the verisimilitude of Virgil, yet he 
never falls into a base or servile imitation of the great 
Latin poet, but preserves throughout the cast of 
thought of a Portuguese " conquistador." To criticize 
the " Lusiads " further is without the purpose of this 
book, but in conclusion it must be pointed out that 
the great poem remains the strongest bond of union 
between the modern Portuguese people, whether in 
Portugal itself, or in Brazil, Goa, Macao, and Mozam- 
bique. It is impossible to meet an educated Portu- 
guese, who does not know his Camoens ; he is more 
to them than Dante to the Italians, Goethe to the 
Germans, or Shakespeare to the English ; he sings of 



274 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

their nation's glory, and in maintaining his fame, each 
one of them is interested. Never was this more 
manifest than in the Camoens Celebration of 1880, 
when Portuguese-speaking people of all climes, and 
of all varieties of political and religious opinion, 
gathered together in Lisbon to do honour to the 
memory of their great poet, whose glory they felt to 
be a connecting link between them all. 

It was not only in the domain of poetry that the 
boundless energies of the Portuguese of the heroic age 
distinguished themselves ; in prose composition, also, 
they stood high above their contemporaries of other 
nations. History, as might be expected, was their 
chief study, and Joao de Barros, the Portuguese Livy, 
was the writer who bridged over the gap between 
the old chroniclers, of whom Damiao de Goes was 
the last, and the regular historians. This young 
nobleman, who was born in 1496, was distinguished 
at the Portuguese Court by his ardent study of the 
Latin historical writers, and especially of Livy, and 
was commissioned by King Emmanuel to draw up an 
account of the discoveries and conquests of the Portu- 
guese in the East. John III. continued the royal 
patronage to Joao de Barros, who received many 
lucrative appointments, such as Captain-general of 
Brazil and treasurer of the Indian department at 
Lisbon. The latter post gave him the opportunity to 
collect valuable information on his subject, and he 
made, good use of it. His "Asia " is written in exact 
imitation of the style of Livy ; it is divided into 
decads and abounds in speeches which might have 
been, but certainly never were, delivered, and in 




JOAO I)E BARROS. 
{From a Print in the British Museum.) 



276 PORTUGUESE LITERATURE — CAMOENS. 

curious theories, entirely without foundation. Never- 
theless, Joao de Barros possesses the greatest quality 
of an historian, for he took pains in trying to ascertain 
the truth, and when he believed he had found it, he 
told his story simply and directly. He combines the 
naive simplicity of the early chroniclers with the art of 
making a story interesting, and he deserves a niche 
in the history of Portuguese literature as the first 
writer of modern Portuguese prose. In fiction the 
" Amadis de Gaul " type of romance was followed by 
imitations of the " Palmeirim de Inghilterra ; ' both 
are alike tedious and absurd, and thoroughly deserve 
the hearty mockery of Cervantes, who laughed them 
and their school out of existence. Far more interest- 
ing, if also somewhat tedious, are the pastoral novels, 
which were originated by the poet Bernardim Ribeiro, 
and written with most success by Rodrigues Lobo, 
for they are truly national, and exhibit the love of 
nature, which is inherent in the Portuguese character. 
Nor was more serious literary work neglected by 
the universally cultured Portuguese of the heroic age. 
Mention has been made of the great scholars, who 
made the University of Coimbra renowned, and who 
encouraged the study of the classics. Theological 
inquiry was also much favoured, and Francisco 
Ferrario, one of the divines at the Council of Trent, 
and Jeronymo de Azambuja, a learned Hebrew 
scholar, who wrote a commentary on the Bible, both 
held a high place in the estimation of their contem- 
poraries. Among grammarians, the name of Manuel 
Alvares, a Jesuit, is honourably remembered, while 
scientific research was represented by the mathemati- 



LITERARY ACTIVITY OF THE HEROIC AGE. 277 

cian, Pedro Nunes, who was reckoned one of the 
wonders of his age. Lastly, Andrea de Resende, the 
greatest Portuguese antiquary, must be again noticed, 
for his " De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniae " is a work of 
exceptional value, and contains a transcription of 
many Roman inscriptions, since destroyed. 

Enough has been said to indicate how great and 
varied was the literary activity of the Portuguese 
during their golden age, and it is worthy of notice, 
that their literature was most abundant in great works 
at the very time in which their energies were most 
strained by their Asiatic conquests. It is matter for 
wonder, that one small nation could do so much, and 
in the " Lusiads " the key-note of their success is to 
be found. The Portuguese race, trained under great 
kings and great captains, believed itself to be invin- 
cible, and from that very belief it remained invincible 
for a time. When the illusion was shattered, the 
superabundant energy which it had fostered vanished 
completely. When once a nation has been conquered, 
and its belief in its invincibility is gone, its power 
withers away. The greatness of a nation depends 
upon the opinion its people have of themselves as 
individuals and members of the body politic ; as long 
as they believe in themselves they can do anything ; 
when their faith in their invincibility disappears, their 
position among nations speedily declines. 



XIII. 

THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

THE death of the Cardinal-King Henry brought 
the people of Portugal face to face with the problem 
which all had been discussing ever since the melan- 
choly fate of Dom Sebastian. There were seven 
candidates for the throne, but only five of them 
need be seriously considered, for the claims of Pope 
Gregory XI II., as heir-general to a cardinal, and of 
Catherine de' Medici, through the first marriage of 
Affonso III. to the Countess of Boulogne in the 
thirteenth century, need no further notice. The rela- 
tionship of the other five claimants to Emmanuel 
"the Fortunate" can be best perceived from the table 
on the opposite page. From this table it clearly 
appears that the true heiress to the throne was 
Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, and failing her 
heirs, the Duke of Parma ; and that the claims of 
Philip II. of Spain and of the Duke of Savoy were 
only legally valid in case of the extinction of the 
descendants of Dom Duarte or Edward, Duke of 
Guimaraens. The University of Coimbra, after due 
consideration, declared in favour of the Duchess of 









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280 THE SIXTY YEARS* CAPTIVITY. 

Braganza, but Philip II. of Spain cared little for 
this opinion ; he had long hoped to sit upon the 
throne of Portugal, and to rule over the whole Iberian 
peninsula, and he wished still more to add the 
profits of the Portuguese trade with Asia to his 
own American revenues, and thus fill his exchequer 
with the sinews of war for his struggle against the 
Protestants of the north of Europe. Philip II. there- 
fore set to work to win over the majority of the 
Cortes which had been convened at Lisbon, to 
settle the succession to the throne. Money and 
lavish promises assisted the eloquence of the two 
chief supporters of the King of Spain, Christovao 
de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, Bishop of Leiria ; 
and when the death of the cardinal-king was an- 
nounced in January, 1580, the Cortes was quite 
ready to recognize Philip as king, although the 
people, or rather that small section of the people 
who were Portuguese patriots, felt and expressed all 
the traditional hatred against the union of the thrones 
of Spain and Portugal. 

The death of King Henry hurried on matters, and 
Philip, in order to establish himself peacefully on the 
throne, entered into negotiations with the Duke of 
Braganza. The King of Spain solemnly promised the 
duke that he should have Brazil in full sovereignty 
with the title of king, and that a marriage should be 
arranged between his daughter and the Prince of the 
Asturias, heir to the conjoined thrones ; and the 
duke, who hated war and loved peace, accepted 
these terms, in spite of his wife's opposition. But, 
to the surprise of Philip, another competitor for the 



THE CLAIMS OF THE PRIOR OF CRATO. 28 1 

crown, to whom he had paid no attention — Dom 
Antonio, the Prior of Crato — declared himself king 
at Santarem, and, entering Lisbon without opposi- 
tion, struck money and began to raise soldiers. This 
Dom Antonio was the son of Dom Luis, Duke of 
Beja, the second son of Emmanuel " the Fortunate," 
by Violante de Gomes, surnamed " the Pelican," one 
of the most beautiful women of her time. Dom 
Antonio alleged that his father was secretly married 
to his mother, and reminded the people, in a pro- 
clamation, that, even if the marriage were not legal, 
one of the greatest of all the kings of Portugal, the 
victor of Aljubarrota, was a bastard also. But the 
Portugal of the close of the sixteenth century, ener- 
vated by wealth and luxury, oppressed by the 
Inquisition, and with its free population reduced in 
numbers, possessed none of the energy of the Por- 
tugal of the fourteenth century, and felt no inclina- 
tion to fight against the King of Spain, the son of 
the great Emperor Charles V., and the uncle and 
friend of their lamented monarch, Dom Sebastian. 
The brave, but hot-headed and noisy Prior of Crato 
could not be compared in warlike prowess or states- 
manlike qualities to John of Aviz, and he had no 
" Holy Constable " to support him ; and the Cortes 
of 1580, unlike that which in 1385 had listened to the 
manly words of Joao das Regras, and declared John 
"the Great" king of Portugal, listened to the promises 
of Christovao de Moura, and rejected the Prior of 
Crato. Dom Antonio raised a few soldiers, but the 
Duke of Alva who entered Portugal at the head of 
twenty thousand men, defeated them without diffi- 




PHILIP II. 



PHILIP II. OF SPAIN, KING OF PORTUGAL. 283 

culty at Alcantara on August 26th, when the pre- 
tender fled to France, and Philip II. was proclaimed 
king. 

In 1 581 Philip II. of Spain and I. of Portugal, as 
he now styled himself, solemnly entered Lisbon, and 
in the presence of a great Cortes held at Thomar he 
swore on April 15, 1581, that he and his successors 
would observe the following conditions, which had 
been settled by his agents. He swore that he would 
maintain the privileges and liberties of the Portu- 
guese people ; that the Cortes should be frequently 
summoned to meet in Portugal ; that the viceroy or 
chief governor should always be a native, unless the 
king should give that charge to one of the royal 
family ; that the royal household should be kept up 
on the same scale as hitherto ; that all offices, civil, 
military, and judicial, and all dignities in the Church, 
and in the orders of knighthood, within the kingdom, 
should be conferred upon Portuguese subjects alone ; 
that the commerce of Africa, Persia, and India should 
be reserved to them, and carried on only in their 
vessels ; that he would make no royal grant of any 
city, town, or royal jurisdiction to any but Portu- 
guese ; that forfeited or lapsed estates should never 
be absorbed in the royal domain, but be regranted 
to some relative of the last possessor or to some 
other Portuguese subject ; that the king should 
reside as much as possible in Portugal, and that, 
when he did come, he should not take the houses 
of private individuals for his officers, but observe 
the custom of Portugal ; that there should be always 
resident at the royal court an ecclesiastic, a chan- 



284 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

cellor, a treasurer, and two masters of requests, of 
Portuguese birth and nationality, to manage all busi- 
ness relating to their country ; that the revenue of 
Portugal should be kept distinct from that of Spain, 
and spent in the kingdom ; that all matters of justice 
should be finally settled there ; that Portuguese 
noblemen should be admitted to offices in the house- 
holds of the King and Queen of Spain ; that all 
customs duties at the land frontiers should be 
abolished ; and that King Philip should at once 
grant three hundred thousand crowns out of his 
royal treasury to redeem prisoners, repair cities, and 
relieve the miseries which the plague had brought 
upon the Portuguese people. All these conditions 
Philip II. solemnly swore to observe, and he was in 
consequence recognized as King of Portugal, not 
only in Portugal itself, but in Brazil and the Indian 
settlements, where Fernao Telles had succeeded the 
viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, as governor-general. 

The other candidates for the crown of Portugal 
were obliged to acquiesce in Philip's success ; the 
Duke of Braganza, though greatly disappointed at 
only receiving the office of Constable of Portugal 
and the Order of the Golden Fleece instead of the 
sovereignty of Brazil, was too apathetic to resist, 
and, in face of his apathy, the Dukes of Parma and 
Savoy were forced to surrender their claims, which 
were obviously inferior to those of the Duchess of 
Braganza. Only the Prior of Crato persisted in his 
attempts to win the throne from Philip by relying on 
the old dislike of the Portuguese people for the 
Spaniards. He was cordially received in France by 



THE DEATH OF THE PRIOR OF CRATO. 285 

Catherine de' Medici, who, though Italian by birth, 
was true to the French policy of trying to weaken 
Spain ; and through her influence a strong French 
fleet of sixty ships of war, with many troops on 
board, was sent, under the command of Philip Strozzi, 
to the Azores, which had recognized Dom Antonio 
in 1580 as king of Portugal, and had refused to 
acknowledge Philip. But the ill-luck of the Prior 
of Crato followed him ; the French fleet was de- 
feated at Terceira by the Spanish admiral, Don 
Alvaro de Bacam on July 26, 1582 ; Strozzi was 
killed, and Dom Antonio escaped with difficulty to 
England. There Elizabeth received him cordially, 
and in 1589, the year after the defeat of the Great 
Armada, she sent a strong fleet, under Sir Francis 
Drake and Sir John Norris, to help him win back 
his " kingdom." This attempt also proved a failure ; 
Maula Ahmed ibn Mohammed of Morocco was 
prevented from advancing to the prior the loan of 
two hundred thousand crowns, which he had pro- 
mised on receiving Dom Antonio's son, Dom Chris- 
tovao, as a hostage, by Philip's timely surrender of 
Arzila ; Drake and Norris quarrelled, and the Eng- 
lish retired without effecting anything of importance. 
The unfortunate prior, finding that Elizabeth would 
do nothing more for him, once more went to France, 
where he died in great poverty and distress on August 
2 ^> 1595- He was buried in the Church of St. 
Germain l'Auxerrois at Paris, where the inscription 
on his tomb styles him " King of Portugal " ; and 
he left several children behind him, who were not 
recognized as legitimate, owing to the fact that their 



286 THE SIXTY YEARS* CAPTIVITY. 

father had taken a vow of chastity on becoming a 
Knight of Malta. 

The attempts of the Prior of Crato did not affect 
the equanimity of Philip II. ; he satisfied himself, 
when he entered his new kingdom, by making fifty- 
two exceptions to the general amnesty, which he had 
declared, including Dom Antonio himself and his 
chief adviser, the Bishop of Guarda. He returned 
to Spain shortly afterwards, leaving his nephew, the 
Cardinal-Archduke Albert as viceroy at Lisbon, with 
a strong guard of Spanish soldiers. The most in- 
teresting occurrences of the cardinal's administration 
were the risings of the two first " false Dom Sebas- 
tians." It has been said that the lower classes of the 
Portuguese people refused to believe that the young 
king was dead, and it was not long before impostors 
arose, who tried to make profit out of this credulity. 
The history of these impostors J is as curious in its 
way as those of the " False Smerdis," the " False 
Demetrius," and the pseudo-Louis XVII. s, and proves 
how strong a hold the memory of Dom Sebastian, 
in spite of his being a rash and foolhardy tyrant, had 
taken upon the minds of the Portuguese people. The 
first two of these impostors, who were mockingly 
called the " King of Pennamacor" and the " King of 
Ericeira" from the headquarters of their operations, 
were Portuguese of low birth, whose risings were 
easily put down. The original inventor of the idea 
was the son of a tiler of Alcobaca, named Sebastiao 

1 On the history of these pretenders, see " Les Faux Don Sebastien," 
by Miguel Martins d'Antas, the late Portuguese minister in London, 
published at Paris, 1866. 



THE FIRST "FALSE DOM SEBASTIANS." 287 

Gonzales, who, after leading a profligate life, had 
retired to a hermitage near Pennamacor. From this 
retirement he emerged in July, 1584, and declared 
that he was King Sebastian ; that he had escaped 
after the battle of Alcacer Quibir, and had since been 
praying in the hermitage, but that the miseries of his 
people had reached his ears, and he had determined 
to come forth to remedy them. He was accompanied 
by two men, who styled themselves Dom Christovao 
de Tavora and the Bishop of Guarda, and began to 
collect money in Pennamacor and the neighbour- 
hood. The trio were speedily arrested and marched 
through the streets of Lisbon to show that they were 
impostors ; and the false Sebastian was then sent to 
the galleys for life, and the pretended Bishop of 
Guarda was hanged. In the following year, one 
Mattheus Alvares, son of a mason at Ericeira, de- 
clared himself to be the lamented Dom Sebastian, to 
whom he bore a considerable personal resemblance, 
and solemnly promised to marry the daughter of 
Pedro Affonso, a rich farmer, whom he created Count 
of Torres Novas. His future father-in-law advanced 
the impostor a large sum of money, and he had raised 
a small corps of eight hundred fanatical followers, 
when the cardinal-archduke thought it necessary to 
send royal troops against him. The poor enthusiasts 
were defeated with much loss, and both the pretender 
and Pedro Affonso were hanged and quartered in 
Lisbon. 

This severe punishment effectually checked the 
appearance of any fresh impostors in Portugal itself, 
and the populace, though firmly convinced that Dom 



288 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

Sebastian would one day appear again, were not to 
be deceived by any more pretenders. 

But these stories had spread far beyond the limits 
of Portugal, and two more attempts to personate the 
deceased monarch were made in Spain and Italy. 
The first of these impostors was a handsome young 
man named Gabriel Espinosa, who bore a striking re- 
semblance to the King of Portugal, and who was given 
out as Dom Sebastian by a Portuguese Jesuit, named 
Madujal, who introduced him to Donna Anna, a 
natural daughter of Don Johti of Austria, and induced 
her to believed in him. The whole scheme partook 
rather of the nature of a personal intrigue than of a 
political plot. Donna Anna, who was very wealthy, 
showered favours on the young man and his sponsor, 
and even advocated his claims to Philip II. The 
deception was, however, too obviously absurd to 
gain many supporters, and Espinosa and his clerical 
adviser were both executed in 1594. Far more 
curious is the story of Marco Tullio, a poor Calabrian 
peasant, who could not speak a word of Portuguese, 
but who nevertheless asserted that he was Dom Sebas- 
tian in 1603, twenty-five years after the disaster of 
Alcacer Quibir. His story was most carefully worked 
out, and his imposture ranks among the most extra- 
ordinary on record. He asserted that he was tne 
king, and had saved his life and liberty by remaining 
on the battle-field among the dead bodies ; that he 
had made his way into Portugal, and had given notice 
of his existence to the Cardinal- King Henry, who 
had sought his life ; that he then returned to Africa, 
because he was unwilling to disturb the peace of the 



THE IMPOSTURE OF MARCO TULLIO. 289 

kingdom by a civil war, and travelled about in the 
garb of a penitent ; that he next became a hermit in 
Sicily, and was on his way to Rome to declare him- 
self to the Pope, when he was robbed by his servants, 
and obliged to find his way to Venice. When he told 
this elaborate tale at Venice, he got a few Portuguese 
residents there to believe in him, and was soon 
arrested in that city at the demand of the Spanish 
ambassador as an impostor and a criminal. He was 
several times examined, but stuck to his story so 
cleverly, and with such obstinacy, that the authorities, 
who were not sorry to embarrass the Spanish Govern- 
ment, refused to punish him as an impostor. The 
story of his claim spread so widely abroad, that the 
enemies of Spain became anxious to prove it true, 
and to set him up as a thorn in the side of Philip III. 
The Prince of Orange went so far as to send Dom 
Christovao, son of the Prior of Crato, to request the 
Venetian authorities to make further inquiries ; but 
those prudent governors only held a solemn public 
examination, when the Calabrian told his tale again, 
and then expelled him from their dominions without 
expressing any opinion as to its truth. From Venice 
he went to Padua in the disguise of a monk, and 
thence to Florence, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany 
had him arrested and given up to the Spanish Viceroy 
at Naples. He was imprisoned in the Castle del Ovo, 
publicly exposed, and sent to the galleys ; and as he 
made adherents even there, he was transferred to San 
Lucar, and eventually executed. The singular bold- 
ness of this imposture, and the tenacity with which 
the ignorant Calabrian stuck to his story, in spite of 



290 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

its evident falsity, make it memorable in the history 
of pretenders. 

The " Sixty Years' Captivity," as the domination of 
Spain over Portugal from 1580 to 1640 is called, was 
a time of unexampled disaster for the country in 
every quarter, and the Portuguese, with their in- 
dependence, seemed to have lost all their old courage 
and heroism. Under the administration of the 
Cardinal-Archduke Albert great efforts were made 
to send a powerful contingent to the fleet known as 
" The Great Armada," and the destruction of this 
fleet by the English in 1588 ruined the naval power 
of Portugal. So low did the country fall, that it 
could not even defend its own ports, and in 1595 the 
English, under Sir Francis Drake, sacked the im- 
portant city of Faro in the Algarves. As a portion of 
the Spanish dominions, Portugal had to suffer defeat 
from all the enemies of Spain. The foremost of 
these enemies were England and Holland, and the 
Dutch were the first nation to break down the 
Portuguese monopoly of the lucrative trade with 
Asia. This they did with the more ease, since, with 
the true commercial spirit, they not only imported 
merchandise from the East to Holland, but also 
distributed it through Dutch merchants to every 
country in Europe ; whereas the Portuguese in the 
days of their commercial prosperity were satisfied 
with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon, and 
letting foreign nations come and fetch them. The 
incursion of the Dutch merchants into Asia was 
caused by the action of Philip II. in closing the port 
of Lisbon to them in 1594; and in 1595 Cornelius 



THE DUTCH FIRST GO TO ASIA. 291 

Houtman, a Dutchman, who had been employed by 
the Portuguese as a pilot in the Indian seas, and had 
afterwards been imprisoned by the Inquisition, led a 
Dutch fleet round the Cape of Good Hope for the 
first time. 

But before studying the rapid manner in which, 
first, the Dutch, and then the English and other 
foreign nations, contended for a share in the Asiatic 
trade, and eventually destroyed the Portuguese 
power in the East, it is necessary to draw attention 
to the fact that this destruction did not commence 
until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and 
the reign of Philip III. The ruin of Portugal was 
indeed due to the policy of Philip II., whose enemies 
Holland and England consummated it; but it was 
hardly commenced in his reign, which ended in 1598. 
Indeed, during that period, when the power of 
Portugal was on the very point of extinction, its 
Asiatic trade, and more especially its Indian trade, 
was at its height. 1 Philip II. faithfully observed the 
promises he had made to the Cortes of Thomar in 
this respect. All the viceroys he appointed were 
Portuguese, and he made no attempt to intrude 
Spaniards into either official appointments or into 
the conduct of the Asiatic commerce. The Portuguese 
viceroys of his reign, Dom Francisco Mascarenhas, 
Dom Duarte de Menezes, Dom Manoel de Sousa 
Coutinho, Dom Mathias de Alboquerque, and Dom 
Francisco da Gama, were all able and enterprizing 
rulers, who increased the prestige of the Portuguese 
power throughout the East by many deeds of daring, 

1 Hunter's " Imperial Gazetteer of India," article, India, vol. vi. p. 360. 



292 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

and especially by the conquest of the King of Kandy 
in Ceylon. The yearly fleets increased in number ; 
the peoples of the East had got accustomed to regard 
the Portuguese as invincible ; and the wheels of 
administration, from long practice, ran smoothly. 
Especially active were the missionaries, principally 
Jesuits, in Asia, and their progress was forwarded 
rather than checked by the accession of Philip II. to 
the throne of Portugal. The bishopric of Goa was 
raised to an archbishopric in 1577, and suffragan 
bishops were appointed wherever the influence of the 
Portuguese spread, and it is curious to note that an 
important mission headed by Dom Luis de Sequeira, 
consecrated Bishop of Japan, and Father Alexandra de 
Valignano, was despatched to Japan to 1598 and had 
much success. 1 But though the authorities of the 
Roman Catholic Church in Asia paid much attention 
to preaching the gospel among the distant peoples 
of the East, in India they were chiefly occupied in 
persecuting the Nestorian Christians on the Malabar 
coast with the help of the Inquisition. These 
Nestorian Christians were especially obnoxious to 
the orthodox Catholics, who got the Portuguese to 
prevent the arrival of any consecrated Nestorian 
bishop in India by blockading the coast, and who 
solemnly condemned the doctrines of the Nestorians 
in the famous synod of Diamper (Udayampura) held 
by Archbishop Alexis de Menezes in 1599. The 
history of the work of the Jesuits in India at this time 
is peculiarly interesting ; the keynote to their policy 
is contained in the following words : " The Christian 

1 The " Da Asia " of Diogo de Couto, decade xii. book i. chap. xix. 




s S 



= o ^ 



St 



294 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

religion cannot be regarded as naturalized in a 
country, until it is in a position to propagate its own 
priesthood ; " * and it must be remembered that the 
credit of their activity must not be attributed to 
Portuguese priests alone, for Jesuits of all nations co- 
operated in the work of evangelization, and among 
them should be noted Thomas Stephens, an English- 
man and rector of the Jesuit college at Salsette. 
In preaching, teaching, and writing these early 
Jesuit missionaries were equally able, and it is 
recorded that the first book printed in India was 
printed by the Jesuits at Cochin in 1570. In opposi- 
tion to this activity must be noted the terrible severity 
of the Inquisition at Goa, which stained the labours 
of these early missionaries with blood. 

The last twenty years of the sixteenth century, 
comprised in the reign of Philip II., from 1580 to 
1598, mark the height of the wealth and power of 
the Portuguese in the East, but their fall into nothing- 
ness there during the reigns of Philip III. and Philip 
IV. was as rapid as their success had been astound- 
ing. The first great blows were struck by the Dutch 
merchants, whose ships were sent out at their own 
expense, and in no way protected by the State. In 
1 597 two years after Houtman had led a Dutch fleet 
round the Cape, the Dutch established a factory in 
Java. In 1601 they defeated the Portuguese governor 
of Malacca, and took that city ; in 1607 they 
conquered the Portuguese settlements in the Moluccas 
and Sumatra; and in 1618 they founded Batavia, 
which became the capital of the trade of the Spice 

1 Hunter's " Imperial Gazetteer of India," vol. vi. p. 251. 



THE ENGLISH FIRST GO TO ASIA. 295 

Islands, and soon not only took the place of Malacca, 
but rivalled Goa. Not satisfied with the trade of the 
further East, they attacked that of China also, and in 
1635 occupied the island of Formosa. At a later 
date they even ousted the Portuguese from their chief 
settlements in India and Ceylon, always excepting 
Goa, which, according to Catholic belief, has ,ever 
been preserved to the Portuguese by the holy bones 
of St. Francis Xavier. Meanwhile, just as the Dutch 
broke the power of the Portuguese in the Spice 
Islands and China, a new power had arisen to attack 
their Indian monopoly. The ancient allies of the Portu- 
guese the English, now made no distinction between 
them and their bitter enemies, the Spaniards, and 
during the last forty years of the " Sixty Years' Cap- 
tivity," they laid the foundation of their empire in 
India. During the reign of Elizabeth, the English had 
sacked Pernambuco in 1594, destroyed Fort Arguin 
on the African coast in 1595, and ravaged the Azores 
in 1597 ; during that of James I. they attacked the 
Indian trade of Portugal. As was the case with the 
Dutch, the assault upon the Portuguese monopoly 
was the work of private traders, not of the State. 
This is not the place to trace the slow growth of the 
English power in India, but it is enough to say that 
the English ships went to Asia with no idea of 
conquest, and solely with the desire to trade. This 
the Portuguese desired to hinder, and in trying to 
prevent the English from taking on board cargoes at 
Surat in 161 5, the Portuguese were defeated by 
Captain Best, and thus lost their reputation for in- 
vincibility on the north-west coast of India. The 



296 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

English, instead of showing a bold front, made 
efforts to live in harmony with the Indian kings, 
and especially with the Great Mogul, and were 
rewarded by being looked upon with favour instead 
of with suspicion, and being allowed to set up many 
commercial agencies. As traders, the English mer- 
chants had no wish to go to war and maintained no 
armies to defend their agencies, and the only offensive 
operation they undertook against the Portuguese was 
in 1622, when they assisted the Persians to capture 
Ormuz. These rapid .onslaughts completely over- 
threw the Portuguese power in Asia. The Dutch 
quickly absorbed all the trade of the further East, and 
of the Spice Islands in particular ; the English gained 
a good hold upon that with Persia and North-western 
India ; and in 1629 the Portuguese commerce with 
Bengal was almost destroyed by the capture of their 
headquarters, Hugll, by Shah Jehan who killed one 
thousand Portuguese, and carried over four thousand, 
including women and children, into captivity. Even 
smaller European nations attacked their monopoly, 
and in 161 6 the Danes established themselves at 
Serampore and Tranquebar. Against all these blows, 
Portugal made little resistance ; Golden Goa was shorn 
of its pre-eminence ; and the Portuguese fleets when 
homeward bound were preyed upon by the Dutch and 
English cruisers. 

It was not only in the East that disasters fell in 
quick succession upon the Portuguese, but efforts were 
made also by the Dutch to dispossess them of their 
great empire in South America. The history of the 
Dutch in Brazil is as remarkable as their history in 



THE DUTCH IN BRAZIL. 20,7 

Asia, and considering the small size of Holland, the 
same feeling of astonishment, which strikes the 
student, when he reads of the exploits of the Portu- 
guese in the sixteenth century, affects him, when he 
examines the enterprises of the Dutch in the seven- 
teenth. It was in 1624, when success was assured in 
Asia, that a Dutch West India Company was founded 
to drive the Portuguese out of South America. The 
new company at once sent a fleet under Admiral Willi- 
kens to attack Brazil, and this admiral met with little 
opposition in the capture of San Salvador, the capital 
of Portuguese South America. The Portuguese 
governor-general, Dom Diogo de Mendonga, aban- 
doned the city, but the Archbishop, Dom Miguel de 
Teixeira, took his place, and calling on his clergy to 
take up arms, he defended the city for a few days, 
and then retired to a neighbouring port. Admiral 
Willikens plundered the city, and returned with a 
vast booty, to the delight of his employers, and left 
only a small garrison behind, which was soon driven 
back in all its forays, and eventually closely blockaded 
by the gallant old archbishop, who took the title of 
Captain-general of Brazil. In April, 1626, strong 
reinforcements arrived under Dom Emmanuel de 
Menezes, and the city of San Salvador once more 
fell into the hands of the Portuguese. It is not 
necessary to trace the exact history of every Dutch 
expedition to Brazil ; it is enough to say that from 
1626 to 1637, plunder was brought home every year 
and distributed to the shareholders of the company, 
while no real attempt at establishing trade or at colo- 
nization was made. This policy naturally caused the 



298 THE SIXTY YEARS' CAPTIVITY. 

Dutch to be loathed by the Portuguese settlers as 
robbers and pirates, and kept them in a state of 
perpetual disquietude. In 1637, a great ruler, Count 
Maurice of Nassau, was sent out by the Dutch West 
India Company as Governor-general of their posses- 
sions in South America, which extended roughly 
over the four Captainships of Pernambuco, Tamaraca, 
Paraiba, and Rio Grande. This great general and 
statesman attempted to entirely destroy the Portu- 
guese power in South America, and to establish 
a Dutch dominion there. His warlike expeditions 
were successful, excepting an attack on San Salvador, 
and he also managed to establish a general system of 
administration over the seven northern captainships 
with his capital at Mauriceburgh opposite the strongly 
fortified island of the Recife. It was Maurice of 
Nassau, who gave up the system of plundering the 
Portuguese, and substituted that of taxing them, and 
his power was at its height, when the news of the 
revolution of 1640, and of the overthrow of the 
Spanish domination, arrived in Brazil and revived 
the spirits of the Portuguese colonists. 

To compensate for all these losses, the destruction 
of the monopoly of the Asiatic trade, the loss of 
Ormuz and Malacca, and the reduction of the greater 
part of Brazil, what advantages had Portugal received ? 
The promises made by Philip II. to the Cortes of 
Thomar were mostly broken by his successors. The 
Duke of Lerma and the Count-Duke of Olivares, the 
all-powerful ministers of Philip III. and Philip IV. 
tried to see how far and how entirely they could 
prove to the Portuguese people that they were subject 



THE RULE OF THE SPANIARDS. 299 

to Spain, and not a free nation. The Cortes, instead 
of being summoned frequently, was only summoned 
once during the reign of Philip III., in 1619, in order 
to recognize his son as heir to the throne ; and was 
never summoned at all during the reign of Philip IV. 
Spaniards filled every office in the kingdom, and 
more especially in the garrison towns ; Spanish eccle- 
siastics were consecrated to Portuguese bishoprics ; and 
the Portuguese council at the Court of Madrid was 
reduced to a single secretary. Taxation was heavy, 
and the revenue from it was not spent in the country, 
and the promise that no Portuguese land should be 
granted to other than Portuguese subjects was often 
broken, conspicuously in the case of the Duke of 
Lerma, who secured a grant of the royal domains 
of Beja and Serpa. But Lerma and Olivares forgot 
that the Portuguese were a separate race, with a great 
and noble history ; they would not be trampled on 
for ever, and to the surprise of Spain, the little 
country rose in rebellion in 1640 and put an end to 
the " Sixty Years' Captivity." 




XIV. 

THE REVOLUTION OF 164O. 

THE Portuguese people groaned under the power- 
lessness and poverty which fell to their lot during 
the Sixty Years' Captivity. None of the advantages 
which had been so eloquently prophesied by Chris- 
tovao de Moura as the inevitable result of a union 
with Spain had been experienced. Instead of being 
protected by great Spanish armies, the colonies and 
trade of Portugal had been left an open prey to the 
enemies of Spain ; it was on account of her union 
with Spain that the Dutch and English attacked the 
Portuguese possessions in both East and West ; and 
in return for all she lost, Portugal did not even have 
the satisfaction of retaining the independence of its 
local government, but was administered for the benefit 
of Spaniards alone. The proverbial Castilian haughti- 
ness was especially aggravating to the nobles and 
people of Portugal ; there was no attempt made to 
unite the two peoples ; they kept apart like oil and 
water, and the traditional hatred of the Spaniard 
grew to be more intense than ever. The loss of 
material prosperity and the insolent demeanour of 



PORTUGUESE LITERATURE. 301 

the Spanish officials affected all classes, high and low, 
and incited them to rebel, and to these causes must 
be added the influence of the Portuguese writers. 
The great Camoens had not lived to see the Spaniards 
supreme in his beloved country, but he had successors 
during the Sixty Years' Captivity, who sang in the 
same lofty strain of the great deeds of the Portuguese 
warriors during the heroic period. Such poems as the 
" Primeiro Cerco de Dio " (" The First Siege of Diu "), 
by Francisco de Andrade ; the " Segundo Cerco de 
Dio," by Jeronymo Corte-Real ; the " Affonso Afri- 
cano," by Vasco Mousinho de Quebedo ; and the 
" Malacca Conquistada," by Francisco de Sa de 
Menezes, were all calculated to stir the hearts of the 
Portuguese of the seventeenth century, and to make 
them desire to be worthy of their great forefathers. 
Nor were the prose writers less eloquent than the 
poets in telling of the great deeds of the past ; the 
"Decadas" of Diogo do Couto, and the "Asia," 
" Europa," " Africa," and " America Portugueza," of 
Manoel de Faria e Sousa, continued the work of 
Joao de Barros in making the Portuguese proud of 
their past exploits, while the historians, Bernardo de 
Brito and Antonio Brandao, in their " Monarchia 
Lusitana," told the story of the centuries of indepen- 
dence before Portugal became a province of Spain. 

A universal feeling of discontent had arisen during 
the reigns of Philip III. and Philip IV., but the final 
impulse from passive discontent to active rebellion 
was supplied by the energy of certain Portuguese 
noblemen, who relied for success on the weakness of 
Spain and on help from France. The Spain of Philip 



302 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

IV. was indeed very different to the Spain of Charles 

V. and Philip II.; its days of greatness were over; 
Holland was practically independent ; and Catalonia 
was in revolt. On the other hand, France had passed 
through the terrible civil wars of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and was being moulded into a mighty kingdom 
by the hand of Richelieu. One of the keynotes of 
Richelieu's policy was to harass Spain ; and for this 
reason the great cardinal encouraged the revolt of the 
Catalans in 1639, and had long fomented the feeling 
of discontent in Portugal. As early as 1636, one of 
Richelieu's secret agents is found writing to his 
master, " All Portugal cries aloud, ' When will the 
King of France deliver us from the Pharaoh of 
Spain'?" 1 and in 1638 the cardinal sent one of his 
most trusted agents, the Chevalier de Saint- Pe, to re- 
port upon the disposition of the Portuguese people. 
Richelieu soon grasped the situation of affairs, and 
resolved to encourage an open rebellion in Portugal, 
in order to secure an independent ally in the Iberian 
Peninsula, which should be such a thorn in the side of 
Spain as Scotland had in former days been in the side 
of England. The discontent of the people was shown 
in many overt acts ; in 1634 the people of Lisbon 
refused to pay their taxes ; in 1637 a serious riot 
broke out at Evora, which remained in a state of 
insurrection for many months ; and attacks upon 
Spanish soldiers and officials constantly took place 
all over the country. 

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1 Richelieu's "Letters," edited by the Vicomte d'Avenel, vol. vii. 
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304 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

some one to rally round ; the nobility wanted a 
leader. This leader and representative was found in 
John, eighth Duke of Braganza, the legitimate heir 
to the throne. This great nobleman was the head of 
the most noble family in Portugal, and the direct 
lineal descendant of the bastard son of John " the 
Great," who had married the daughter of the Holy 
Constable, and he was further the grandson of Donna 
Catherine, the rightful heiress to the Cardinal-King, 
Dom Henry. Philip II. had purchased the acqui- 
escence of the husband of Donna Catherine in his 
usurpation by securing to him the vast possessions of 
the Braganza family in Portugal, but he had not 
fulfilled his promise of the grant of Brazil in full 
sovereignty, to the great disgust of the heiress to the 
throne of Portugal. She had inspired her hatred for 
Spain and her love for Portugal into her son, Dom 
Theodosio, seventh duke, but her grandson, Dom 
John, was an indolent and timid nobleman, who 
preferred an easy life to a crown. Dom John had 
succeeded to the duchy and estates in 1630, at the 
age of twenty-six, and he had married Donna Luisa de 
Guzman, daughter of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, in 
1633. This marriage had been hailed with delight by 
Olivares, as it seemed to bind the Braganza family 
closer to Spain, and he persuaded Philip IV. to grant 
Dom John as a wedding-gift the duchy and lordship 
of Guimaraens, which had been the property of Dom 
Edward, youngest son of Emmanuel " the Fortunate," 
the prince through whom the Duke of Braganza 
traced his claim to the throne. But this marriage did 
not cement the friendship of the House of Braganza 



THE DUCHESS OF BRAG AN Z A. 305 

with Spain. On the contrary, the duchess seemed to 
surrender her Spanish nationality ; she made a point 
of speaking Portuguese, and became more patriotic 
than the Portuguese themselves ; she never forgot 
that her husband was by rights a king, and was 
encouraged to use all her great abilities to scheme 
for the throne of Portugal by the recollection of a 
prophecy made to her in her childhood that she 
should be a queen. Dom John himself did not share 
her opinions ; he was no warrior, but loved hunting, 
music, and the arts, and his lovely hunting-seat at 
Villa Vicosa, far more than he did politics or even his 
country. But his easy nature made him subservient 
to the will of his duchess, and she, through the duke's 
agent, Joao Pinto Ribeiro, Professor of Civil Law at 
Coimbra, let the nobility of Portugal know that the 
Duke of Braganza would put himself at their head, if 
they would but strike a blow for the freedom of their 
country. 

Portugal was at the period, when the Duchess 
of Braganza involved her husband in her ambitious 
schemes, under the nominal rule of Margaret of 
Savoy, Duchess of Mantua ; and the Court of this 
princess was, contrary to the promises made by 
Philip II. to the Cortes of Thomar, entirely filled with 
foreigners. Her Lord High Steward or Mordomo- 
Mor was the Marquis de la Puebla, a Spaniard, and 
her Estribeiro-Mor, or Master of the Horse, was the 
Marquis de Bainetti, an Italian, while among more 
important posts, two Spaniards, Don Didace de 
Cardenas and Don Fernando de Castro, were respec- 
tively general commanding the Portuguese cavalry, 



306 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

and controller of the Portuguese navy. The most 
important native of the country admitted to her 
council was Dom Sebastiao de Mattos de Noronha, 
Archbishop of Braga, Primate of the kingdom, and 
a wealthy nobleman, but the chief administrative 
power was confided to Miguel de Vasconcellos de 
Brito, Secretary of State. This man was hated by his 
fellow-countrymen with the intensity of hatred only 
felt for a renegade. He had won the favour of 
Olivares, the Spanish Minister, by his skill in 
squeezing money out of Portugal, and his energy 
and activity made him indispensable to the Duchess 
of Mantua. But if he was hated by all classes of the 
Portuguese people, he was more especially obnoxious 
to the Portuguese nobility owing to his policy of 
excluding- them from all posts of honour and emolu- 
ment, and his personal insolence towards them. 

This was the state of the government and the 
general position of affairs in Portugal when Joao Pinto 
Ribeiro, acting with the full sanction of the Duchess, 
and the half-hearted assent of the Duke, of Braganza, 
began to form a conspiracy among the leading noble- 
men to bring about a revolution and expel the 
Spaniards. If he could only combine the nobles to 
take the lead and strike the first blow, he knew well 
that the people would warmly support them. The 
first step was to make the future king acquainted 
with his friends, and for this purpose great hunting 
parties were organized at Villa Vicosa, to which the 
most patriotic Portuguese noblemen were invited in 
turn. This behaviour, and the attitude of the young 
duchess, began to inspire Olivares with a vague 



THE DUKE OF BRAG AN Z A. 307 

alarm, and he began to regret the policy which had 
allowed the rightful heir to the throne of Portugal to 
retain his vast estates in the quarter where his in- 
fluence was most to be feared. He first offered the 
government of the Milanese, an office generally held 
by a prince of the blood, to the Duke of Braganza, 
and, when the appointment was declined on the score 
of ignorance of Italian politics, the astute Spanish 
statesman began to feel still more uneasy. But it 
was necessary to disguise his apprehensions, for he 
knew that it was impossible to arrest the Duke of 
Braganza on his estates without causing serious dis- 
turbances, and he therefore directed the duke to make 
a tour of Portugal in his capacity of Constable to 
inspect the condition of the defences. This tour gave 
the duke ah opportunity to make the acquaintance 
of the greater part of the people, while he avoided 
falling into the various traps set for him. Then 
Olivares delivered his last stroke of policy ; he 
ordered out the whole ban and arrikre-ban of Portugal 
to serve under the king in person in putting down 
the Catalan rebellion, and directed the Duke of 
Braganza to proceed immediately to Madrid. The 
duke delayed his departure for a time, and Joao 
Pinto Ribeiro informed the noblemen who had been 
forming a conspiracy in Lisbon that they must 
strike at once or it would be too late. 

The names of these noblemen are worthy of record, 
not only because of the daring and successful revolution 
they initiated, but because they show how patrio- 
tic the Portuguese nobility were as a body, since 
most of the famous families of the early history of 



308 THE REVOLUTION OF 164O. 

Portugal and of the heroic period are represented 
among them. The leaders of the famous forty who 
planned the revolution were Miguel de Almeida, a 
venerable nobleman, at whose house the first meeting 
of the conspirators was held ; Pedro de Mendonca 
Furtado, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain or Camereiro- 
Mor ; Antonio and Luis de Almada ; Jorge de Mello, 
Hereditary Grand Huntsman ; Antonio de Mello de 
Menezes, his brother ; Estevao, and Luis da Cunha ; 
Rodrigo and Emmanuel de Sa ; Pedro Mascarenhas, 
v Carlos de Noronha, Gaston de Coutinho and Antonio 
de Saldanha. The Archbishop of Lisbon, Rodrigo da 
Cunha, the most popular ecclesiastical dignitary of 
the realm, if not actually a conspirator, certainly had 
some knowledge of what was going on through his 
relatives, the Almadas and Da Cunhas. The con- 
spirators met regularly and skilfully planned their 
rising, and in all their deliberations Joao Pinto 
Ribeiro, though not a nobleman himself, and rather 
looked down on by the forty, showed himself the 
boldest and most sagacious leader of them all. There 
was no idea of establishing a republic, in imitation 
of the Netherlands, as Vertot absurdly states, for the 
keystone of their plan was to make a show of legality, 
and to assert that they were merely placing the right- 
ful king upon the throne. Their preparations were 
fully made, when Joao Pinto Ribeiro brought the 
news that the blow must be struck at once, or else 
that the Duke of Braganza must proceed to Madrid. 

The 1st of December, 1640, was the day appointed 
for the revolution and on the morning of that day 
the conspirators assembled by different streets in 



THE REVOLUTION OF DECEMBER 1ST. 309 

front of the palace. There had been no treachery, 
and consequently the viceregal court was quite un- 
prepared for resistance. The signal was given by a 
pistol shot from Ribeiro, and each conspirator went 
to his appointed place to accomplish his appointed 
task. Dom Miguel de Almeida overpowered the 
German guards of the palace without any difficulty, 
and Dom Jorge de Mello and Dom Estevao da Cunha 
were equally successful with the Spanish guards. 
The third party, under the leadership of Ribeiro, 
forced their way into the palace, and moved towards 
the apartments of the hated Secretary of State, Miguel 
de Vasconcellos. On their way they met Francisco 
de Soares de Albergaria, the " Corregidor Civil," or 
civil judge, who, in answer to their cries of " Long live 
the Duke of Braganza!" shouted "Long live the King 
of Spain and Portugal!" and was then immediately 
shot. They next came across Antonio Correa, the 
secretary's chief clerk, whose insolence had almost 
rivalled his master's, and Antonio de Menezes struck 
him down with his poniard and severely wounded 
him. At last they reached the apartments of the 
secretary, whom they discovered hidden in a cupboard 
under a mass of papers. The trembling wretch was 
dragged from his concealment, and shot by Dom 
Rodrigo de Sa. All parties now rushed to the part 
of the palace inhabited by the Duchess of Mantua, 
whom they found with the Archbishop of Braga. 
The princess was no coward, and boldly faced the 
conspirators, but she was informed by Dom Carlos de 
^Noronha that she was a prisoner, and the life of the 
Archbishop of Braga, who attempted to cut his way 



THE SUCCESS OF THE CONSPIRATORS. 3II 

through his opponents, was with difficulty saved by 
Dom Miguel de Almeida. 

These successes in the palace were followed by 
equal successes in the city of Lisbon. The populace 
of all classes detested the Spanish domination ; they 
rose in a body, armed themselves as best they could, 
and arrested every Spaniard they could find from the 
Marquis de la Puebla to the naval officers on shore 
from the Spanish vessels lying in the Tagus. Dom 
Antonio de Saldanha, as previously arranged, entered 
the Relacdo, or High Court of Justice, and informed 
the judges of the revolution, and the president, Gon- 
calo de Sousa, immediately began to pronounce his 
decrees in the name of King John IV., instead of 
King Philip III. Dom Gaston de Coutinho set free 
all the political prisoners, and some young men rowed 
off to the three Spanish galleons in the port, and 
easily obtained possession of them, since most of their 
officers had already been arrested on shore. There 
remained only the citadel, or castle, of St. George, 
garrisoned by a strong Spanish force under Don 
Luiz de Campo. This important post was obtained 
by a stratagem of Dom Antonio de Almada, who forced 
the Duchess of Mantua to sign an order for its sur- 
render by a threat to assassinate all the Spanish 
prisoners already taken, and the order was willingly 
obeyed by the timorous governor. The conspirators 
then assembled in the palace, and amidst the shouts 
of the populace, the Archbishop of Lisbon was pro- 
claimed Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, with 
Dom Miguel de Almeida, Dom Pedro de Mendonca 
Furtado, and Dom Antonio de Almada as councillors 



312 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

of state. The new government sent off expresses in 
all directions to announce the news of the successful 
revolution, and obtained peaceable possession of all 
the chief fortresses and strong places round Lisbon, 
of Belem, Bugio, S. Antonio, Almada, and Cascaes, 
with the exception only of S. Julian, at the mouth of 
the Tagus. 

The Duke and Duchess of Braganza were all this 
time waiting with feverish impatience at Villa Vi^osa 
for news of the great undertaking, and on the follow- 
ing day, Sunday, December 2nd, Dom Jorge de Mello 
arrived, after travelling all night, and hailed the Duke 
and Duchess as King and Queen of Portugal. The 
neighbouring country was devoted to the duke and 
his family and joyfully received the news of his acces- 
sion, and Affonso de Mello took possession of Elvas, 
the strongest city in Portugal, in the name of John 
IV., without any bloodshed. On December 3rd the 
new sovereign entered Lisbon amidst general rejoic- 
ings, and on December 15th he was solemnly crowned 
in the Cathedral of Lisbon. Never was a sudden 
revolution more successful. From Oporto to Faro 
the people everywhere rose in rebellion ; the Spanish 
arms were torn down ; the Spanish garrisons were 
expelled, and John IV. was hailed with acclamation. 
A Cortes was summoned to meet at Lisbon for the 
first time since 1619, and on January 19, 1641, 
John IV. was declared King of Portugal, as the right- 
ful heir of Emmanuel "the Fortunate," and the whole 
Cortes swore to obey him, and recognized his eldest 
son, Dom Theodosio, as heir to the throne. The new 
sovereign determined to meet his loyal people half 



CORONATION OF JOHN IV. 313 

way, so he declared that his patrimonial estates were 
sufficient to meet the expenses of his royal' house- 
hold, and that the revenues of the Crown lands should 
for the future be spent on national needs. He be- 
stowed important posts and orders on the leading 
conspirators, and bribed Don Fernando de la Cueva 
to surrender the fortress of S. Julian, the only place 
which resisted his authority. The last person to be 
informed of this sudden and successful revolution was 
the former king, Philip IV. of Spain and III. of 
Portugal. His courtiers all feared to tell him the 
news, and when it became necessary to break it to 
him, the Count- Duke Olivares accomplished the feat 
with his usual adroitness. " Sire," he said to the king 
with a pleased countenance, " I have to congratulate 
you on a most fortunate event. Your Majesty has 
just obtained a powerful duchy, and some magnificent 
estates." " By what means," answered the astonished 
monarch. " The Duke of Braganza," said Olivares, 
" has madly allowed himself to be seduced by the 
populace, who have proclaimed him King of Portugal. 
His vast estates are therefore forfeited, and become 
the property of your Majesty, who, by the annihila- 
tion of this family, will in future reign securely and 
peaceably over that kingdom." 

Olivares had every reason to speak with confidence, 
for there could be no doubt that Portugal, weakened 
by her long subjection, could do little or nothing to 
resist the power of Spain, if it could be fully employed. 
But, fortunately for the independence of Portugal, 
Spain was distracted by the Catalan rebellion and 
foreign war, and was unable to exert her strength for the 



314 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

time being. Both the new king and his advisers felt, 
however, that it would not be wise to count too much 
or too long upon this fortunate circumstance, and 
he sent ambassadors all over Europe to inform the 
foreign sovereigns of the revolution, and to beg for their 
help and alliance. The old Chancellor Oxenstiern, 
who governed Sweden after the death of her warrior 
monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, during the minority 
of Queen Christina, promptly recognized the acces- 
sion of the new dynasty, and welcomed it as another 
breach in the power of Spain. Charles I. of England, 
after some delay, also recognized John IV., but he 
was too much occupied by his quarrels with the 
Parliament to pay much attention to foreign politics. 
The Dutch received the news of the revolution with 
joy, and compared it to their own successful rebellion 
against Spain, and they at once concluded a treaty 
with Portugal, and promised to send assistance. But 
it was to France that John IV. looked with most con- 
fidence for help ; he remembered the secret emissaries 
of Richelieu and their lavish promises ; and on 
January 22, 1641, three days after his coronation, he 
sent two of his most accomplished courtiers, Francisco 
de Mello and Antonio Coelho de Carvalho, on a 
special mission to Paris. They were received with 
much cordiality by the great cardinal, who understood 
how thoroughly Spain must be crippled by the 
Catalan and Portuguese rebellions, and, to their sur- 
prise, also by the Queen of France, Anne of Austria, 
the sister of Philip IV. De Mello ventured to hint 
his surprise at this hearty reception, when the queen 
made a famous reply : " True it is, that I am the 



THE CAMINHA CONSPIRACY. 315 

sister of his Catholic Majesty, but am I not also the 
mother of the Dauphin ? " Their negotiations ended 
in the conclusion of an offensive and defensive treaty 
between France and Portugal, signed on June 1, 1641, 
by which the King of France promised to make no 
peace with Spain until the independence of Portugal 
was fully recognized. These embassies and treaties 
ended in the arrival of a strong French fleet, under 
the command of the Chevalier de Breze, in the Tagus, 
on August 7, 1641, followed by a Dutch fleet, under 
Admiral Gylfels, on September 10th. 

At this very time, before the first king of the House 
of Braganza had been a year upon the throne, a 
serious conspiracy was in progress, which had for its 
aim the re-establishment of the power of Spain. This 
conspiracy was almost entirely the work of one man, 
Dom Sebastiao de Mattos de Noronha, Archbishop ot 
Braga, and Primate of Portugal. This prelate had 
not been in any way interfered with by the new 
government, but he felt that he had lost the power 
which he had enjoyed during the viceroyalty of the 
Duchess of Mantua, and he had never forgiven the 
danger in which his life had been placed on the day 
of the outbreak of the revolution in Lisbon. He first 
engaged the Marquis of Villa Real, and his son, the 
Duke of Caminha, to join him. Their family boasted 
of royal blood, and ranked next to that of the Duke 
of Aveiro in the kingdom of Portugal, and they felt 
indignant that no important posts had been conferred 
upon them for their acquiescence in the revolution. 
The marquis was won over by a promise that he 
should be the Viceroy of Portugal, if the conspiracy 



3l6 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

succeeded, and his son threw himself so heartily into 
the project that the whole plot is generally known as 
the " Caminha conspiracy." The other chief laymen 
engaged were the Count of Armamar, the nephew of 
the primate, the Count of Ballerais, Lourengo Peres 
de Carvalho, keeper of the treasury, who feared to 
lose the lucrative post which he had held so long 
under the Spanish domination, and Antonio Correa, 
the confidential clerk of the murdered Vasconcellos, 
who had been severely wounded in the outbreak of 
December 1st. A far more important ally than any of 
these noblemen and officials, was the Grand Inquisi- 
tor of Portugal, Dom Sebastiao de Tello, Bishop of 
Leiria, who was persuaded to promise the " novaes 
Christiaos," or half-converted Jews, a cessation of 
all persecution if they would join in overthrowing 
John IV. They, on their part, were ready to assist 
because the new monarch had absolutely refused to 
make any concessions to them for fear of offending 
the Pope. The arrangements were soon made ; it 
was settled that the " novaes Christiaos " were to 
set fire to the palace on August 5th ; that the king 
was to be stabbed in the confusion which would 
ensue ; and that the Duchess of Mantua should 
be released from her convent, and again placed 
in power. The Count-Duke Olivares gladly ac- 
quiesced in all the schemes of the treacherous 
archbishop, and despatches giving all the details of 
the plot were entrusted to a converted Jew named 
Baese, to send to Madrid. These despatches fell 
into the hands of Marquis of Ayamonte, a Spanish 
nobleman, and a relation of the new Queen of Portu- 



THE VICTORY OF MONTI JO. 317 

gal, who was acting as intermediary between John 
IV. and his brother-in-law, the Duke of Medina 
Sidonia, and the marquis promptly sent them to 
Lisbon. Forewarned was forearmed, and on August 
5th, the day fixed for the rising, all the leaders of the 
conspiracy were arrested. Baese confessed, when put 
to the torture, and on August 29th all the noblemen 
concerned, including the Marquis of Villa Real and 
the Duke of Caminha, were publicly executed at 
Lisbon, while the Primate and the Grand Inquisitor 
were condemned to imprisonment for life. 

This severe punishment did not check the ardour 
of the friends of Spain, who were chiefly officials and 
discontented nobles, and numbered few adherents 
among the people, and in 1643 a new pl°t was dis- 
covered, headed by Francisco de Lucena, Secretary 
of State, who was promptly executed. In spite of 
these difficulties, the government managed to get 
together an army ; it was neither well-disciplined nor 
well-equipped, but popular enthusiasm took the place 
of experience, and on May 26, 1642, the Portuguese 
under the command of Mathias de Alboquerque, 
defeated a Spanish army under the Baron de 
Molingen at Montijo. This victory, which was loudly 
compared to that of Aljubarrota, was, in truth, of no 
great importance from a military point of view, but it 
invigorated the spirit of the Portuguese people, and 
encouraged them to persist in fighting for their 
independence. From every quarter of the globe 
news arrived that the old Portuguese possessions had 
declared for John IV. Mozambique, Goa and the 
possessions in India, Malacca, and Macao, all threw 



318 THE REVOLUTION OF 164O. 

off the domination of Spain, and prepared to send 
money and men to Lisbon ; while Brazil, the most 
valuable possession of the Portuguese crown, since the 
Dutch had taken possession of the Asiatic trade, 
began a gallant struggle for the House of Braganza, 
a struggle which brought about a war with the Dutch 
in Europe, and lost the Portuguese the assistance 
which had been promised them in 1641 by the arrival 
of the fleet under Gylfels. 

The story of the great dominion acquired for the 
Dutch in South America by Count Maurice of 
Nassau has been told ; and the wealth received by 
the Dutch West India Company from his efforts was 
only inferior to that of the Dutch East India 
Company. The Count had managed matters on 
a large scale ; he had built or strengthened forty- 
five fortresses ; he commanded a regular army of 
three thousand men and a fleet of ninety ships ; and 
he sent over to Holland no less than twenty-five 
thousand chests of sugar a year. But in spite of his 
success he recognized that this dominion depended 
on the sword ; the Dutch were not good colonists, 
for they never thought of making their homes in 
Brazil, but always of returning some day to Holland ; 
and all the European settlers and planters in the five 
captainships held by the Dutch were of Portuguese 
descent. Further, the native Brazilians were on more 
friendly terms with the Portuguese than the Dutch 
owing to the labours of the Jesuits among them. 
Count Maurice of Nassau saw therefore that it was 
impossible to oust the Portuguese and replace them 
by Dutch settlers, so he established a dominion, 



MAURICE OF NASSAU IN BRAZIL. 319 

resembling that of the English in India, which rested 
for its keystone upon the military possession of the 
country and the maintenance of strong garrisons in 
the various fortresses. It need hardly be said that 
the Portuguese of all the various captainships freely 
communicated with each other, and so wise and 
prudent was the administration of Count Maurice 
that the Portuguese settlers in his captainships were 
envied by those who remained under the power of 
Spain. 

But this attitude of mind changed, when the news 
arrived of the successful revolution of December, 
1640. Dom Antonio Telles da Silva, the Portuguese 
Governor-General at once proclaimed King John IV. 
at San Salvador, and the Portuguese in the Dutch 
captainships felt an immediate desire to join their 
brethren. Matters of European policy however 
prevented them from striking a blow at once ; John 
IV. could not afford to make enemies of the Dutch, 
and one of the terms of his alliance with them was 
that matters should remain exactly as they were 
in Brazil for ten years. However the Portuguese 
colonists had not to wait ten years owing to the 
ungrateful behaviour of the Dutch themselves. The 
Dutch West India Company could not appreciate the 
political ideas of Maurice of Nassau ; these traders 
wanted large profits and not a great empire ; they 
were disgusted at the amounts spent on the fortresses 
and the army, and in 1644 they recalled the great 
man whose ideas were too grand for them to fathom. 
Immediately on his departure, matters went from 
bad to worse in the Dutch captainships. His 



320 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

successors, a committee of merchants, neglected the 
fortresses, and aroused the hatred of the Portuguese 
sugar planters by their exactions, and though they 
sent home an unparalleled amount of sugar and 
money for one year, it was the only year they 
remained in office ; for in 1645 the- whole of the 
Portuguese colonists in the Dutch captainships burst 
into insurrection. It was in vain for the Dutch 
authorities to complain to Dom Antonio Telles da 
Silva ; he answered that it was not his fault if the 
Portuguese revolted ; they did not do so under his 
orders or directions ; and the Portuguese ambassador 
at the Hague made the same assertion in the name 
of the king. Seldom has an insurrection been so 
rapidly successful ; Antonio Moniz Barreto and 
Antonio Teixeira de Mello speedily reduced the 
province of Maranham, and Joao Fernandes Vieira, 
a self-made man and originally a butcher's boy, 
occupied the whole of the province of Pernambuco, 
and drove the Dutch into their capital. The neg- 
lected fortresses were easily taken, and soon the 
Dutch held no place, but the Recife. It was in 
vain for Holland to declare war against Portugal, 
and to send great armaments to Brazil ; the national 
movement was too strong to be resisted ; the 
Dutch won some naval victories but could gain no 
fresh foothold in the country, and in 1655 the island 
of the Recife was abandoned after a ten years' siege, 
and a King of Portugal once more reigned over the 
whole of Brazil. 

Great as was the triumph of the revolt in Brazil, it 
at first filled the heart of the King of Portugal with 



JOHN IV. OFFERS TO ABDICATE. ' 32 1 

alarm, for it deprived him of an ally in Europe on 
whose -valuable assistance he had firmly relied. 
Everywhere he looked in vain for help. Sweden 
could do nothing ; England was torn by civil war ; 
and in France his ally, Cardinal Richelieu, had been 
succeeded as supreme minister by Cardinal Mazarin. 
John IV. instinctively felt that he could not depend 
upon Mazarin, who would certainly throw him over, 
if a peace should be made between France and 
Spain, and in his despair he made an offer to resign 
his throne to a French prince, who should bring ample 
assistance from France. The nature of this offer is 
best told in a letter from Mazarin to the Duke of 
Longueville, dated October 4, 1647. "The King of 
Portugal," wrote the Cardinal, " after having maturely 
considered the state of affairs, is disposed to resign his 
crown and retire to the Azores, and to offer his 
kingdom to any one whom the Queen of France 
shall select, believing himself strong enough to have 
such a person recognized as king and obeyed by all 
the people of Portugal. He only desires that the 
person selected should be a prince who may expect 
powerful help from France, and that he shall have the 
means to make such an alliance with his eldest 
son, as may eventually secure the succession of the 
kingdom to the latter. He proposes M. the Duke 
of Orleans and Mademoiselle, or M. the Prince, or 
you and your daughter." z This strange offer of 
abdication came to nothing, and it may well be 
doubted if John IV. would have had the power to 
introduce a foreign prince in this way ; and if he had 

1 Mazarin's " Letters," edited by M. Cheruel, vol. ii. p. 501. 




JOHN IV. 

(From a Print of the I erioa.) 



ALLIANCE BETWEEN FRANCE AND PORTUGAL. 323 

succeeded, Mazarin would have abandoned Portugal 
with equal certainty even if a French prince had 
been on its throne. Though this scheme failed, John 
IV. still hankered after help from France ; he offered 
his daughter, Donna Catherine de Braganza with a 
large dowry both to the Duke of Beaufort and to the 
young Louis XIV., and he also promised large sums 
of money to the avaricious cardinal for his own use. 
Years passed on, occupied with these various 
schemes and entreaties for assistance, and it was 
not until John IV. threatened to make peace at any 
price with Philip IV. that Mazarin's trusted agent, 
the Chevalier de Jant, signed an offensive and defen- 
sive alliance with Portugal on September 7, 1655. 1 

This behaviour of France did not seriously concern 
Portugal so long as the war between France and 
Spain continued to occupy the chief strength of the 
Spanish armies ; but on all sides, John IV. saw that he 
was regarded abroad as a temporary monarch, ruling 
only until Spain had an opportunity to crush him. 
From England he could get no help ; CromweH 
showed his contempt for him and for the received 
principles of international law, by ordering the trial 
and execution of Dom Pantaleone de Sa, a lad of nine- 
teen, and the brother of the Portuguese ambassa- 
dor Rodrigo de Sa, for murder and riot in London ; 2 
and his refusal to surrender Prince Rupert and Prince 
Maurice in 1650 to Admiral Blake, caused that 

1 See the interesting little book by Jules Tessin, published at Paris in 
1877 under the title of " Le Chevalier de Jant. Relations de la France 
avec le Portugal au temps de Mazarin." 

2 See Carlyle's " Speeches and Letters of Cromwell," vol. iv. p. 21 ; 
Whitelocke's " Memorials," ed. 1732, pp. 592, 595. 



324 THE REVOLUTION OF 1640. 

gallant admiral to capture his ships and pillage his 
colonies. On the other hand, the people of Portugal 
stood staunchly by their legitimate monarch. Brazil 
recognized his authority and sent him what help she 
could ; the Indian and Chinese possessions contributed 
what they could in money, and his great admiral 
Dom Salvador Correa de Sa e Benevides defeated 
several Spanish fleets, and conquered Angola and the 
former Portuguese possessions on the African coast. 

In the midst of these perplexities, expecting daily 
to hear of the conclusion of a peace between France 
and Spain, which should leave the latter power free 
to crush him, King John IV., the first king of the 
House of Braganza, died on November 6, 1656. His 
eldest son Dom Theodosio, whom he had created 
Prince of Brazil, had predeceased him in 1653, and 
his heir was a boy of thirteen, weakly both in body 
and in intellect. John IV. was not a great man ; he is 
no more to be compared with John " the Great " than 
the victory of Montijo is to that of Aljubarrota ; but 
his name and accession mark a great event. Hesitat- 
ing and undecided by nature, all his strength came 
from his queen ; but for her, he would never have 
been king of Portugal. But the revolution which 
placed this mediocre man upon the throne is both 
interesting and important ; it shows how impossible it 
is for a nation which has once been great to acquiesce 
in the loss of its independence. The heroic age of 
Portugal was indeed past, but the victory of Montijo 
and the insurrection in Brazil show that the people 
had recovered from the inertness and sloth which had 
permitted Philip II. to establish the power of Spain 



THE REVIVAL OF PORTUGAL, 325 

over them. The struggle with Spain was not con- 
cluded ; the hardest part of the contest was to come, 
yet the people, if not their chosen monarch, never 
dreamed of failure. New and national institutions 
arose under the direction of Joao Pinto Ribeiro to take 
the place of the effete institutions of the Sixty Years' 
Captivity ; councils of war and the colonies were 
organized at Lisbon ; ships were built and armies 
raised ; new tribunals such as the " Junta do 
Commercio " were erected. Nor were men of letters 
backward in encouraging the revival of independence ; 
Francisco de Sa de Menezes the poet, Antonio 
Vieira the preacher, and Jacinto Freire de Andrade, 
the biographer of Dom Joao de Castro, all showed 
the spirit of patriotism, and it is not unworthy of 
notice that the first Portuguese newspaper, trie Gazeta 
de Lisboa was established in 1641. The whole course 
of the Revolution of 1640 shows that the people of 
Portugal in the seventeenth century were not unworthy 
of their ancestors, and that they had learnt much, 
because they had suffered much, during the " Sixty 
Years' Captivity." 




XV. 



THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 



The death of John IV., and the accession of the 
boy Affonso VI., proved to be anything but a disaster 
to the House of Braganza. The queen became 
sole regent, and this energetic and able woman, 
who had always been the courageous supporter of 
her weak husband, determined to prosecute the war 
against Spain with redoubled vigour. She, too, 
hankered after a close alliance with France, and dis- 
trusted the promises of Mazarin ; but she felt that it 
was no good to wait for allies until Spain was at 
liberty to attack her, and now ordered the Portuguese 
army to take the field. Hitherto, since the battle of 
Montijo, the war had languished, and had been con- 
fined to skirmishes on the frontier, but the queen- 
regent determined to renounce this policy and to 
invade Spain. Her enterprize was not crowned with 
success, and the siege of Badajoz which she attempted 
resulted in failure and defeat. It was obvious that 
the Portuguese army, though full of gallant and loyal 
soldiers, was quite undisciplined and unfit for any 
serious operation of war. This being the case, the 



THE ENGAGEMENT OF SCHOMBERG. $2 J 

queen got her ambassador at Paris, the Count of 
Soure, to engage Frederick, Count Schomberg, the 
most famous military adventurer of his time, to enter 
her service, and to bring with him eighty officers and 
four hundred non-commissioned officers, to organize 
and discipline the Portuguese army. Schomberg, 
whose strange fate it was to serve under nearly every 
leading monarch in Europe, and to die an English 
duke at the battle of the Boyne, gladly accepted the 
queen's offer. Like the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg 
and Marshal Beresford in later days, he found that 
the Portuguese made excellent soldiers, brave and 
amenable to discipline, and the result of his labours 
appeared in the great victory won by Dom Antonio 
Luis de. Menezes, Count of Cantanhede, over the 
Spaniards under Don Luiz de Haro, at Elvas, on 
January 14, 1659. 

This victory, though it revived the courage of the 
Portuguese, who had been much -depressed by their 
repulse at Badajoz, in one way injured the cause 
of Portugal, for it so incensed Don Luiz de Haro 
that, during the famous conferences on the Island 
of Pheasants with Mazarin, which led to the signa- 
ture of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, he 
would not listen to any intercession on behalf of 
the Portuguese, and insisted on the insertion of 
a secret article in the treaty, that France would 
promise to abandon them entirely. Neither Mazarin 
nor Louis XIV. intended to observe this secret 
article and to give up the advantage of having 
such a useful ally in the peninsula to use against 
Spain, and they accordingly looked about for some 




i'divlo iil^{fY^'^Cd\'I^r.r'/^S'^iff'(xJM-m^ 



J*W-6to 



Jl^, 



CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA. 

{From an Engraving by Fait home.) 



THE MARRIAGE OF CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA. 329 

means to evade it. Mazarin again sent the trusty- 
Chevalier de Jant to explain to the queen-regent 
that the seeming desertion of Portugal was rather 
nominal than real, and that the little kingdom would 
not be left to bear the whole brunt of the war with 
Spain. The means was found in 1660 by proposing 
that Charles II., the newly restored King of England, 
should marry the Donna Catherine de Braganza. 
This notion was acceptable to all parties. Mazarin 
and Louis XIV. would thus assist Portugal without 
breaking their promise to Spain ; Charles II. would 
get some ready money, and would repay the debt of 
gratitude he owed for the shelter afforded to Prince 
Rupert and Prince Maurice. The Earl of Clarendon 
saw the advantage of the alliance in establishing the 
influence of England in the peninsula and in India ; 
and the queen-regent was promised the help of a 
powerful army of English veterans, trained in the 
Great Civil War, whom Clarendon was anxious to get 
out of the country, and also the aid of England in 
making peace with the Dutch. Thus all parties were 
satisfied, except the King of Spain, who protested 
vehemently, and his Catholic Majesty offered to give 
a dowry to any Protestant princess whom Charles 
II. might select, if only he would give up this Portu- 
guese alliance. These protests were in vain. The 
strong wills of Louis XIV., Lord Clarendon, and the 
queen-regent of Portugal were all set upon the 
marriage, and Francisco de Mello, Count da Ponte, 
was sent to London, and Sir Richard Fanshaw, the 
translator of the " Lusiads," was sent to Lisbon to 
arrange the preliminaries. These were soon settled, 



330 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

and on May 18, 1661, the marriage was announced 
to the English Parliament. Catherine de Braganza 
was to bring as her dowry the town of Tangier in 
Morocco, the island of Bombay, and the town of 
Galle in Ceylon, as well as £800,000 in money ; 
while on his side Charles II. promised to force the 
Dutch to make peace with Portugal, and in con- 
sideration of a further sum of £30,000 a year to send 
an army of not less than three thousand veterans to 
aid in the war with Spain. These liberal terms were 
approved in Parliament in spite of the religion of the 
Portuguese princess; and in April, 1662, the Earl of 
Sandwich arrived in the Tagus with twenty English, 
ships to take the bride to England. The marriage 
took place on May 31, 1662, and it was thus, upon 
the suggestion of the King of France, that the first 
step was made towards the revival of the old alliance 
between England and Portugal, which had existed 
under the kings of the House of Aviz, an alliance 
which was, in the indignant language of later French 
writers, to make Portugal a province of England. 

Before the English soldiers arrived and the final 
struggle with Spain commenced, a Court revolution 
took place in Lisbon, The king, Affonso VI., was 
now nearly nineteen, and he had grown up a de- 
bauched and vicious youth. A stroke of paralysis 
had disordered his intellect, and his mother, absorbed 
in the cares of government, had left him too much to 
servants. He was entirely under the influence of his 
valet, a young man named Conti, and his chief delight 
was to range the streets of Lisbon at the head of 
a troop of mulattoes and negro slaves, and to play 



VICTORIES OF THE PORTUGUESE. 331 

pranks of which the English " Mohocks " of the 
eighteenth century would have been ashamed. The 
queen-regent, in disgust, banished Conti to Brazil, 
and two accomplished courtiers, Sebastiao Cesar de 
Menezes, Count of Atouguia, and Luis de Sousa e 
Vasconcellos, Count of Castel Melhor, persuaded the 
angry young king to declare himself of age on June 
21, 1662, and to take the government into his own 
hands. The queen retired into a convent, and all 
power fell into the hands of the two conspirators. 

Fortunately for Portugal the two counts were 
energetic and able statesmen, and they pursued in 
every point the policy of the queen. Castel Melhor 
formed the English veterans, who had arrived under 
the command of Murrough O'Brien, first Earl of 
Inchiquin, some French and German volunteers and 
mercenaries, and the newly organized Portuguese 
levies, into a powerful army, of which Schomberg was 
the real, though not the ostensible, commander-in- 
chief. With this army a series of victories were won, 
which caused Affonso VI. to be surnamed Affonso 
" the Victorious," though his own successes, such as 
they were, were confined to the streets of Lisbon. 
On June 8, 1663, the Count of Villa Flor, with 
Schomberg by his side, utterly defeated Don John of 
Austria, an illegitimate son of Philip IV., at Ameixial, 
and afterwards retook Evora ; on July 7, 1664, Pedro 
Jacques de Magalhaes defeated the Duke of Ossuna at 
Ciudad Rodrigo ; on June 17, 1665, the Marquis of 
Marialva and Schomberg destroyed a Spanish army 
under the Marquis of Carracena, at the battle of 
Montes Claros ; and Christovao de Brito Pereira 



332 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

followed up this victory with another at Villa 
Vicosa. 

These repeated successes utterly broke the power 
of Spain in the peninsula, and peace was only a 
matter of time, when Castel Melhor decided to 
increase both his own power and that of Portugal by 
marrying the king, who was a mere tool in his hands, 
to a French princess. Such an alliance was highly 
approved by Louis XIV., who believed it would bring 
Portugal under his influence, and the bride selected 
was Marie Francoise Louise Elisabeth, Mademoiselle 
d'Aumale, daughter of Charles Amadeus, Duke of 
Nemours, and Elisabeth de Vendome, and grand- 
daughter of Henry IV. of France. She was brought 
to Portugal by her relative, the Cardinal d'Estrees, 
and the marriage was celebrated at Lisbon with the 
greatest pomp in 1666. But instead of increasing his 
power, the great minister, Castel Melhor, found that 
this union brought about his ruin. The handsome 
and accomplished young queen could not but loathe 
her worthless and degraded husband, and she speedily 
fell in love with his younger brother, Dom Pedro, the 
Duke of Beja. Her passion was returned, and after 
fourteen months of an unhappy married life, the 
queen suddenly left the palace for a convent, and 
applied for a divorce on the ground of non-consum- 
mation to the chapter of the cathedral church of 
Lisbon. Her action was followed by a Court revolu- 
tion, and Dom Pedro shut King Affonso up in a 
portion of the palace, and assumed the regency on 
November 23, 1667. Every one rejoiced at the over- 
throw of the vicious king. The measures of Dom 



PEACE WITH SPAIN. 333 

Pedro were universally approved by the people of 
Lisbon, and on January I, 1668, he was recognized 
as regent by the Cortes. The great minister, Castel 
Melhor, was not prosecuted, and was allowed to 
retire to Paris, and the young prince, who was not 
yet twenty, took the government of Portugal into his 
own hands. 

The regent immediately hurried on the negotiations 
for a peace with Spain, which had been commenced 
under the directions of Castel Melhor, by the Earl of 
Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell, the English 
ambassadors at Madrid and Lisbon, and on February 
13, 1668, the long war, which had lasted for twenty- 
seven years — ever since the small band of conspira- 
tors in Lisbon had proclaimed King John IV. — was 
formally concluded. By the Treaty of Lisbon, Spain 
solemnly recognized the independence of Portugal, 
and gave its sovereign the title of " Your Majesty," 
which had never been acknowledged even to Em- 
manuel and John III., and in return Portugal ceded 
Ceuta, in Morocco, to the King of Spain. This 
diplomatic success was followed on March 24th by 
the grant of a divorce to the queen, who, on April 
2nd, with the dispensation and blessing of the Pope, 
married the regent Dom Pedro. The wretched ArTonso 
was sent to the Azores, and a new era of peace 
and prosperity commenced for Portugal. The regent 
was fully convinced of the necessity of peace and 
economy, in order to restore the prosperity of the 
kingdom after its long struggle with Spain. He 
reduced the army, and dismissed all the foreign 
soldiers, and he set to work to make improvements in 



334 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

every department of administration. The treasury 
was empty, and the country was miserably poor. 
Agriculture had been neglected during the long war ; 
the Dutch and English had seized upon the Asiatic 
trade ; the Indian possessions were worth little or 
nothing ; and the only source of revenue, except 
taxation, was the wealth of Brazil. Yet Dom Pedro 
had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the 
taxes, or press too heavily upon the sugar and tobacco 
planters of his great dominion in South America, and 
he preferred to reduce the expenses of his household 
to the lowest possible amount. In all his endeavours 
he was assisted by his wife, and it was no wonder 
that the Portuguese people loved and reverenced 
their prudent rulers. 

The only event of importance during the regency 
was the plot of Dom Pedro Francisco de Mendonca 
and Dom Antonio de Cavida to restore Affonso VI. 
to the throne, in 1674. It was fortunately discovered 
in time ; the ringleaders were executed, and Affonso 
VI. was removed from the Azores, where he had been 
trying to make a party, and established at Cintra, 
where he died in 1683. The regent then ascended 
the throne as Pedro II., and added the title of " king " 
to the power he had enjoyed for fifteen years ; but in 
the same year he lost his wife, for whose sake he had 
overthrown his brother. His reign was marked by 
the same characteristics as his regency ; and his 
strict economy and maintenance of peace gave an 
opportunity for the exhausted country to recover. He 
was an excellent administrator, not only from inclina- 
tion, but from a desire to be independent of the Cortes, 




PEDRO II. 

(From a Print in the British Museum.) 



336 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

which he summoned as seldom as possible, and never 
after the arrival of the first consignment of gold from 
Brazil. In his foreign policy he made a point of 
remaining on good terms with both France and 
England, and he refused to interfere in the internal 
affairs of Spain. His friendship with England was 
kept up through his sister, Catherine, who, by his 
instructions, kept herself aloof from ministerial 
quarrels, and remained quietly in her adopted 
country after her husband's death, all through the 
stormy reign of James II. and the Revolution of 1688, 
and who did not return to Portugal until 1692. With 
France he was more wary, for he feared the ambition 
of Louis XIV., and was apprehensive of the danger 
to Portugal which the accession of a Bourbon prince 
to the throne of Spain might cause. 

The vacancy, which would be caused by the death 
of Charles II. of Spain, and the general scramble 
which seemed likely to take place for his dominions, 
were of more importance to King Pedro II. of Portu- 
gal, than to William III. of England, or Louis XIV. 
of France. He felt that he was utterly unable to 
cope with any of the great powers, and he commenced 
saving money for the general war which was certain 
soon to break out. In 1687, at the request of his 
minister and most intimate friend, the Duke of 
Cadaval, he consented to marry again, in order to 
have an heir to the throne. He selected for his 
second wife Maria Sophia of Neuburg, daughter of 
the Elector Palatine, greatly to the chagrin of Louis 
XIV, who hoped he would have chosen a French 
princess ; and by her he had four sons. When the 



THE METHUEN TREATY. 337 

death of Charles II. became an event daily to be 
expected, he proclaimed his intention of remaining 
neutral, and refused, in consonance with the traditions 
of the House of Aviz, to be himself a candidate for 
the Spanish throne. Nevertheless, he increased his 
navy, placed his army on a war footing and repaired 
his fortresses, and in 1699, he had the pleasure of 
receiving the first important consignment of gold from 
Brazil, amounting to a ton and a half, which proved 
to him that he had a new source of revenue more pro- 
ductive than any taxes he could impose at home. 

At last, on November 1, 1700, Charles II. of Spain 
died, and Louis XIV. in accepting the throne for 
his grandson, made his famous declaration, " There 
are now no longer any Pyrenees." King Pedro 
carried his complaisance so far as to acknowledge 
Philip V., as king of Spain, and he even sheltered a 
French fleet under the Count de Chastenau in the 
Tagus, against the assaults of the English admiral, 
Sir George Rooke. But he soon saw that, as he 
feared, it was impossible for him to remain neutral, 
and the insolence of Cardinal Porto Carrero, who 
spoke of him to King Philip as " the rebel duke of 
Braganza," and the information that there was a secret 
treaty, which promised French help for the subjugation 
of Portugal, made Pedro II. decide to enter into a yet 
closer alliance with England. This was exactly what 
the great Whig ministry wanted, and, in 1703, the Right 
Honourable John Methuen was sent to Lisbon with 
full powers to negotiate a political and commercial 
treaty with Portugal. 

On December 27, 1703, the famous Methuen treaty 



3$8 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

was signed, by which Portuguese wines might be im- 
ported into England at a lower duty than those from 
France and Germany, in return for a similar conces- 
sion to English manufactured goods. The immediate 
result of this treaty was that King Pedro acknow- 
ledged the Archduke Charles, the English candidate, 
as King of Spain, and that he gave the English a base 
of operations in the peninsula. The ulterior result 
was that Englishmen in the eighteenth century drank 
port wine instead of claret and hock, while the Portu- 
guese imported everything they wanted beyond the 
bare necessaries of life from England. This was an 
advantage to both nations, for Portugal is eminently 
an agricultural country with neither the teeming 
population nor the materials necessary for manufac- 
tures, while England obtained a friendly province 
from which to import the wine and produce of a 
southern soil, and a market for the sale of the pro- 
ducts of her manufactories. The close connection thus 
formed went deeper than mere commerce ; it estab- 
lished a friendly relationship between the two 
peoples, which was of infinite advantage to the smaller 
nation. At Lisbon a regular English " factory " was 
established, and at Oporto a large colony of English 
wine merchants and shippers carried on business 
operations, which doubled the prosperity of the 
beautiful city on the Douro. The steady influx 
of English capital increased the wealth of Portu- 
gal, and the vineyards of the Entre-Minho-e-Douro 
became proverbial for their prosperous and industrious 
peasantry ; while, on the other hand, the importation 
of English goods gave means of comfort and luxury 



340 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

to the Portuguese people which distinguished them 
in the eyes of all travellers of the last century from 
the Spaniards and Italians. To this day the beautiful 
porcelain from the famous English works at Worcester 
and Derby, Chelsea and Bow, is to be found in Portu- 
guese cottages ; and the English people have not lost 
their taste for port and St. Michael's oranges. 

From a political point of view, the Methuen treaty 
assured the very existence of Portugal ; in all times 
of danger it could now count upon the support of the 
great power whose interest it was to have an ally from 
"whose country it could act against Spain. On March 
7, 1704, the Archduke Charles arrived at Lisbon 
with a powerful English fleet under Sir George Rooke, 
conveying ten thousand English troops under the 
command of Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway. On 
April 30, Philip V. declared war against Portugal, and 
the English advanced with a subsidiary Portuguese 
army under the Count das Galveras and Diniz de 
Mello e Castro. The campaign was successful ; the 
allies took Salvaterra and Valenca, and Sir George 
Rooke surprised the important fortress of Gibraltar. 
In the following year but little was done on the Portu- 
guese frontier, because the Archduke Charles had 
sailed round to Barcelona, and King Pedro, who felt 
himself to be dying, gave up all active interest in 
affairs, and made over the regency to his sister 
Catherine, Queen-dowager of England. Had he been 
conscious he might have heard of the great successes 
and reverses of the campaign of 1706. Lord Galway 
and Dom Joao de Sousa, Marquis das Minas, 
advanced into Spain, and after taking Alcantara, 



THE DEATH OF PEDRO II. 341 

Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila 
in rapid succession, occupied Madrid on July 2, 1706. 
But they did not remain there long ; the Spaniards 
rose in arms for Philip V., and in August, 1706, the 
allied army fell back as quickly as it had advanced. 
Dom Pedro, however, remained unconscious of these 
stirringevents ; he gradually sank, and died at Alcantara 
on December 9, 1706, leaving a reputation of having 
been one of the bes t of the kings of Portugal. The 
great interest of his reign is to be found in the gradual 
formation of the English alliance, which is the clue 
to the Portuguese history of the next century. It was 
commenced by the marriage cf Catherine de Braganza 
to Charles II., strengthened by the action of Lord 
Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell in making 
peace with Spain, and finally cemented by the 
Methuen treaty, and it is curious to note that the first 
link in this chain was forged by Louis XIV. and 
Mazarin in recommending the marriage of Charles II. 
It is important to observe the position of Portugal 
in Asia and South America during the half-century 
which succeeded the " Sixty Years' Captivity," and to 
see how the despised discovery of Pedro Alvares 
Cabral was to more than take the place of the vaunted 
Asiatic connection commenced by the voyage of 
Vasco da Gama. The heavy blows struck by the 
Dutch and English against the Portuguese monopoly 
of the Eastern trade before the successful revolution in 
1640, have already been noticed, and the ruin of the 
Portuguese in Asia was consummated by the Dutch 
during the long naval war which succeeded the attack 
upon their settlements in Brazil. The China trade 



342 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

had not attained very important dimensions, so the 
Dutch left the Portuguese undisturbed at Macao, but 
they destroyed their settlements in the island of 
Formosa, and the English absorbed what trade there 
was by their factory at Canton. It was the spice 
trade and the command of the Spice Islands, which 
the Dutch chiefly coveted, and of which they obtained 
a monopoly, which they practically retain to this day. 
After the foundation of Batavia, all the efforts of the 
Dutch were directed against Malacca, which, though 
in a decayed state, was yet mistress of no inconsider- 
able trade ; twice they stirred up the Achinese to 
attempt the conquest of Alboquerque's famous settle- 
ment, but the Portuguese beat off the natives, and it 
was not until 1640 that the Dutch destroyed the 
rival of Batavia. The Portuguese made no further 
effort to share the spice trade, and after the massacre 
of the English at Amboyna in 1624, the more danger- 
ous rivalry of the merchants of that nation was also 
withdrawn. In India, the Dutch made a point of 
securing the pepper trade only, and left the English 
to absorb that of the products of Northern India, of 
the muslins of Dacca and the brocades of Ahmadabad 
and Surat. The Portuguese repulsed the Dutch from 
Goa in 1639, Dut these determined traders were not to 
be beaten ; in 1662, in spite of the peace which had 
been concluded by the intervention of England, they 
took Cochin, the principal Portuguese station in 
Southern India, and by 1664 were masters of all the 
chief pepper ports on the Malabar coast. They were 
equally successful in Ceylon, where they captured Jaf- 
napatam, the last important Portuguese port, in 1658 ; 



THE DECLINE OF THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 343 

and in 1669, they expelled the Portuguese from the 
Coromandel coast likewise, and took S. Thome and 
Macassar. In Northern India the English were the 
most formidable rivals of the Portuguese. After the 
capture of Hugh" by the orders of Shah Jehan, the 
Portuguese dropped all communication with Bengal, 
and the trade of that important province fell into the 
hands of the English. On the other side of India, the 
English were equally successful. Their victory off 
Surat had broken the prestige of Portugal, and the 
trade with Gujarat, Kathiawar, and Sind was chiefly in 
their possession. So weak indeed had the Portuguese 
become, that Diu, the city immortalized by the brave 
deeds of Antonio de Silveira and Joao de Castro, was 
plundered by a band of Arabs in 1670 ; and Goa itself, 
" Golden Goa," was only saved from the Marathas of 
Sambaji, the son of Sivaji, by the timely aid of a 
Mogul army. On the other hand, the Portuguese 
Jesuits won a reputation almost as great as that of 
the Portuguese heroes ; though the Inquisition still 
continued its horrid work at Goa, there were nobler 
missionaries than the inquisitors, and the name of 
Joao de Brito, who preached with unexampled success 
until his cruel martyrdom in Madura in 1693, deserves 
to be ranked with that of St. Francis Xavier himself. In 
Africa, the chief Portuguese ports were re-conquered 
by Salvador Correa de Sa e Benevides in 1648, but 
they were only of little value, since they had been 
maintained chiefly as stations on the road to India, 
and not for purposes of African trade. The Dutch 
made their resting-place at the Cape of Good Hope, 
which is the reason why Mozambique was left to the 




SILVER COINS. 



SPECIMENS OF PORTUGUES 



(i) A vintem, 20 reis = about a penny. 

(2) Half a tostao, 50 reis = nearly threepence. 

(3) Three vintens = about threepence halfpenny. 

(4) Tostao, 100 reis = rather more than sixpence. 

(5) Six vintens = about sevenpence. 

(6) Twelve vintens, 240 reis = about one shilling and twopence. 

(7) Crusado novo, 24 vintens = about two shillings and fourpence. 






ER AND COPPER COINS. 



COPPER COINS. 



(i) One-and-a-half-reis piece (Peter II., 1700) = less than half a farthing. 

(2) Three-reis piece (Maria and Peter III., 1797) = less than a farthing. 

(3) Five-reis piece (Maria Regina, 1799) = about a farthing. 

(4) Ten-reis piece (Maria I., 1799) = a little more than a halfpenny. 



346 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

Portuguese ; and they also took possession of the rich 
island which had been first sighted by Lourenco de 
Almeida, to which they gave the name of Mauritius, 
after Prince Maurice of Nassau. On the western 
coast the Portuguese retained Angola, the Cape Verde 
Islands, and their other possessions ; but they lost St. 
Helena to the Dutch, who held it until it was captured 
by the English captain, Anthony Munden, in 1673, 
when it was made into a station of the English East 
India Company. With their possessions in Morocco, 
the Portuguese parted with the more willingness, 
since they were only a source of expense ; and the 
cession of Ceuta to the Spaniards and of Tangier to 
the English was generally approved. Of Bombay the 
other territorial cession made to England on the 
marriage of Catherine de Braganza, little need be 
said, for though destined to become the capital of 
western India, it proved at first of so little value, 
that in 1668 Charles II. granted it to the East India 
Company for ten pounds a year. 

Very different from this tale of decay is the history 
of the Portuguese in Brazil during the same period, 
and the comparison shows clearly of how much 
greater value is a colony than a dominion conquered 
and held by the sword. The loyalty of the Portu- 
guese colonists was shown by their expulsion of 
the Dutch with hardly any assistance from the home 
government, and the bonds of kinship enabled the 
Portuguese to maintain their power in South America 
without the establishment and maintenance of power- 
ful armies. Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons 
taught by the history of the daughter country, is that 



DISCOVERY OF GOLD IN BRAZIL. 347 

the less interference the mother country makes in the 
affairs of its colony, the better it will be for both 
countries. The material prosperity of Brazil in the 
seventeenth century was due to the fact that during 
that period the colony was essentially agricultural, and 
that there was therefore time for a large and indus- 
trious population to collect, before gold was discovered 
in large quantities. The production of tobacco and 
sugar was the staple employment of the inhabitants, 
and the rapid development of these resources caused 
the growth of a large fleet, not only to carry these 
commodities to Europe, but to import the thousands 
of negro slaves, who worked in the plantations. And 
it is here well to remark that at this time the Portu- 
guese settlers made no attempt to enslave the native 
Brazilians, who were protected by the Jesuits and by 
edicts of the king, but considered it perfectly just and 
right to make use of negro slaves. This wise 
behaviour and the conduct of the Jesuits, who 
laboured assiduously among the natives, placed them on 
friendly terms with their conquerors, who soon began 
to intermarry with them. Owing to this friendly 
relationship the interior of the continent was gradually 
opened up, and at last gold was discovered in large 
quantities. It was fortunate for the Portuguese that 
it had not been discovered before, for otherwise they 
would certainly have lost their colony during the 
" Sixty Years' Captivity," but at this time they were 
too strongly planted to be expelled, and had besides 
the potent protection of the English navy. The first 
discovery of gold on a large scale took place in 1699, and 
the arrival of the first cargo at an opportune juncture 



31-8 THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 

gave King Pedro the means he required for setting 
his army on foot. It must be remembered that at 
this time there were no Californian or Australian gold 
fields, and that the discovery of gold in Brazil was of 
more importance than it would be now. King Pedro 
prepared to work this source of wealth in a prudent 
manner ; he did not attempt to make the gold fields 
a royal monopoly, which the independent inhabitants 
of the captainships would not have allowed, but 
demanded one-fifth of the total registered yearly 
export. This left enough profit for the gold searchers, 
and as the yearly revenue of the crown of Portugal 
from this source was at least ^"300,000, it may be 
imagined that the kings of Portugal were well able to 
maintain a splendid court at Lisbon in spite of the 
loss of the Asiatic trade. No story is more interest- 
ing than this growth of Brazil into the most valuable 
possession of Portugal ; the land, which was at first 
inhabited by convicts, surpassed in wealth the domi- 
nion won by the noblest sons of the country. 




XVI. 



PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
MARQUIS OF POMBAL. 



THE 



The eighteenth century exhibits fewer features 
of interest than any other throughout the whole 
history of Portugal. The country remained in a 
political sense a mere province of England, and was 
bound by the Methuen treaty to take a part in all the 
wars in which England was engaged, and the impor- 
tance of this arrangement became more and more 
evident, when France and Spain were united by the 
close connection brought about by the " Pacte de 
Famille." The commercial relation was the cause of 
more intimacy between the people of the two nation- 
alities than the political alliance, for it brought, as 
has been said, English merchants and English capital 
into Portugal. But notwithstanding this double bond 
of union the two allies remained entirely separate. 
The Portuguese remained a race of bigoted Catholics, 
and the English made no efforts to convert them. 
This difference of religion prevented any close alliance 
between the reigning houses of the two countries, 
such as had been brought about by the marriage of 



350 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Charles II. to Catherine of Braganza, for any marriage 
with a Catholic princess would have been rejected by 
the statesmen and the people of England. While 
therefore existing as an independent nation under the 
protection of England, Portugal maintained its own 
national characteristics, and remained in other respects 
more like Spain than any other country. The little 
state was no longer in the vanguard of the march of 
European civilization ; it felt that its great days were 
past, and was content to remain in stagnant quiet 
For this reason, if for no other, the story of Portugal 
loses its interest in the eighteenth century, for it was 
illustrated by no great feat of arms, no national revo- 
lution or advance of national progress, and it was at 
this time that in every point of view, literary as well 
as political, it fell behind the other European nations. 
It was inevitable that it should be so ; a nation which 
depended on another for its political independence, 
was not likely to produce heroes. It is strange that 
the influence of English example did not give rise to 
a movement for political freedom and representative 
institutions, but it was not so ; the monarchy remained 
absolutist and was prevented from needing the support 
of the people by the wealth it derived from the gold 
and the diamond mines of Brazil, and the Cortes was 
not once summoned throughout the century. Yet 
this absolutism was not an unmixed evil, for it pro- 
duced a great minister, the Portuguese Richelieu, in 
the Marquis of Pombal. 

The reign of John V., the eldest son of Pedro II., 
who at once assumed the royal power from the regent 
Catherine, was, though it commenced in war, remark- 



WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION. 35 1 

able for the long continuance of peace. The War of 
the Spanish Succession was still raging in the penin- 
sula, and the first campaign after the accession of the 
new monarch was marked by the great defeat inflicted 
on the English and Portuguese by the French and 
Spaniards at Almanza, on April 15, 1707, a battle in 
which it chanced that the English were commanded 
by a Frenchman, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway, 
and the French by an Englishman James Fitz-James, 
Duke of Berwick, Nevertheless John V., w r ho was a 
young man of seventeen, in spite of this disaster, kept 
true to the English alliance and the Methuen treaty, 
and left the management of affairs in the hands of his 
father's minister and friend Joao de Mascarenhas, 
Duke of Cadaval. This able statesman bound the 
king more surely to the Anglo- Austrian alliance by 
marrying him to the Archduchess Marianna, daughter 
of the late Emperor Leopold I., who was escorted to 
Lisbon by a powerful English fleet under Admiral 
Sir George Byng, in 1708. The war continued, how- 
ever, to go steadily against the allies, for the Spaniards 
had rallied enthusiastically around their Bourbon 
king, Philip V. ; and on May 7, 1709, a Portuguese 
army under the Marquis of Fronteira was defeated on 
the banks of the Caia, by the Spaniards under the 
Marquis de Bay. Far more serious was the capture 
of Rio de Janeiro, by the French admiral, Duguay- 
Trouin, on September 23, 171 1, which cut off all 
supplies from Brazil for more than a year. The war 
languished all over Europe after the accession of the 
Archduke Charles as Emperor, and on February 6, 
171 5, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht, 



352 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

peace was signed between Spain and Portugal, at 
Madrid, by the Secretary of State, Diogo de Men- 
donca, Count of Corte-Real. 

As soon as John V. began to mark out a policy for 
himself, after the death of the Duke of Cadaval, he 
showed his distaste for war. He refused to join in 
the war against Cardinal Alberoni, the famous minis- 
ter of Spain, and avoided as far as possible any com- 
bination which might lead to the rupture of peace. 
The only expedition he sent out was a fleet, which he 
equipped at the Pope's bidding to join the Venetians 
in their struggle against the Turks, and which, under 
the command of Lopo Furtado de Mendonca, Count 
of Rio Grande, defeated the Mohammedans off Cape 
Matapan in 17 17. The main effort of King John's 
foreign policy was to combine a firm adherence to the 
Methuen treaty with friendly relations with Spain, by 
which he hoped to avoid war. For this purpose he 
always kept on the best of terms with the English 
ambassadors at Lisbon, notably with Lord Tyrawley ; 
and in 1729 he closely allied himself with the new 
dynasty in Spain. His daughter, Donna Maria 
Josepha de Braganza, was married to Don Ferdinand, 
eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to the throne of 
Spain as Ferdinand VI. ; while the Spanish infanta, 
Donna Marianna Victoria de Bourbon, was married 
to the heir-apparent of Portugal, Dom Joseph. With 
the papacy John V. remained on the best of terms ; he 
lent enormous sums of money to successive popes 
out of the wealth of Brazil, and in return received 
rewards, which were of no real value, but which were 
such as he highly esteemed. Lisbon was divided into 



THE REIGN OF JOHN V. 353 

two dioceses ; the Archbishopric of Lisbon was 
erected into a patriarchate; the patriarch was allowed 
to officiate in vestments resembling those of the Pope, 
and his canons in imitation of those of the cardinals ; 
and, finally, in the last year of his reign, the title of 
" Fidelissimus," or " Most Faithful," was conferred 
upon the kings of Portugal, to correspond with those 
of " Most Christian " and " Most Catholic," attributed 
to the kings of France and Spain respectively. 

These are the only points of interest, which mark 
John V.'s long reign of forty-four years, and as the 
last thirty- five of these years were years of peace, it 
may well be said, happy is the reign which has but 
little history. But it must not be thought that he 
therefore left no impression upon his country. On 
the contrary, he did much to imprint his name on its 
history. He showed a tendency, like so many other 
princes of the eighteenth century, to imitate Louis 
XIV. He spent much money in building, and among 
his most famous efforts in this direction are the patri- 
archal church at Lisbon, the superb convent at 
Mafra, and the great aqueduct which still supplies 
Lisbon with water. He was a munificent patron of 
literature and the arts, and founded the Academy of 
History at Lisbon in 1720. He loved music and the 
theatre, and spent great sums in importing singers 
and dancers from Italy and actors from France. He 
took an intelligent interest in the administration of 
his kingdom, and for the better despatch of business 
formed three secretaryships of state for the home, 
foreign and war, and colonial and naval, departments 
instead of one, and he took a particular pride in his 



354 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

navy, and founded the naval arsenal of Lisbon. One 
other fact also may be recorded to his credit, that in 
1725 he obtained a Bull from Pope Benedict XIII., 
allowing all prisoners of the Inquisition to employ 
counsel to defend them, and ordering that all sentences 
of the Holy Office should be communicated to and 
confirmed by the king in council. This excellent 
monarch had a paralytic stroke in 1742, and for 
the last eight years of his reign, until his death in 
1750, the kingdom was governed by the queen, and 
the Cardinal da Cunha, Patriarch of Lisbon. 

The reign of King Joseph, which lasted from 1750 
to 1777, is made famous by the administration of the 
Marquis of Pombal, the greatest minister who ever 
ruled Portugal, and one of the greatest of eighteenth- 
century statesmen. The king, though a man of real 
ability himself, interfered but little in politics, and 
left the management of affairs entirely in the hands 
of the minister, whose greatness he was the first to 
perceive. The relationship between the monarch and 
his subject resembles that between Louis XIII. and 
Richelieu, and does honour to both parties. In every- 
thing — in his great internal administrative reforms, in 
his financial schemes, in the reorganization of the 
army, in the abolition of slavery, and in the struggle 
with the Jesuits, which ended in the suppression of 
that famous order — King Joseph supported his 
minister. Pombal broke the power of the nobility, 
and made the king more absolute than ever, and he 
exalted the royal prerogative, while using it for his 
measures of reform ; while, in return, the king main- 
tained the minister in power, in spite of the vehement 



THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL. 355 

protests and wily intrigues of the Roman Catholic 
clergy, and the opposition of his wife. 

Sebastiao Jose de Carvalho e Mello, better known 
by his later title of the Marquis of Pombal, was a 
man of more than fifty years of age when his patron 
succeeded to the throne, and he himself entered office. 
His father, Emmanuel de Carvalho, was a country 
gentleman of moderate wealth, but by his mother, 
Theresa de Mendonca, he was related to some of the 
noblest families of Portugal, to the Almeidas, the 
Mellos and the Mendoncas. He was born at Soure, 
on May 13, 1699, and after receiving his education at 
the University of Coimbra, he entered the army as a 
private. He found neither pleasure nor profit in a mili- 
tary career in time of peace, and after leaving the ser- 
vice, he led the life of a man about town in Lisbon. His 
handsome face, great bodily strength, and proficiency 
in athletic exercises, made him popular in all circles 
of society in the capital, in spite of his comparative 
poverty, and he especially distinguished himself, if 
distinction it may be called, among the " Mohocks," 
who infested the streets of Lisbon. There seemed 
no prospect of his ever making any mark in life, when 
in 1733 he made himself the talk of the town by his 
elopement with, or rather his abduction of, a lady of 
the highest rank, Donna Theresa de Noronha, niece 
of the Count of Arcos. His wife's family were at 
first most indignant, but at last they relented, and in 
1739 the bravo of the streets of Lisbon was, by their 
influence, appointed ambassador to the Court of Eng- 
land. It is some consolation for men of advanced 
years to remember that the greatest of Portuguese 




THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL. 

{From a Print in the British Museum.) 



THE EARTHQUAKE OF LISBON. 357 

ministers was forty years of age before he ever re- 
ceived official employment. In London Sebastiao de 
Carvalho turned over a new leaf, and devoted himself 
to the serious study of politics, and he carefully in- 
vestigated the English system of government and the 
causes of England's commercial prosperity. From 
London he was removed to the Court of Vienna in 
1745,' and he there married, on the death of his first 
wife, a daughter of Count Daun, the famous Austrian 
general. On this occasion King John V. was pleased 
out of compliment* to the victor of Kolin, to grant 
Sebastiao de Carvalho letters of nobility, which 
entitled him to the prefix Dom ; and in 1750 the 
ambassador was recalled to Portugal and appointed 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. While he 
was on his way home John V. died, and when 
Carvalho reached Lisbon King Joseph had already 
ascended the throne. 

At first the new Secretary of State held no higher 
rank than his colleagues, but his abilities soon became 
evident to the king, and his conduct at the time of 
the great earthquake of Lisbon gave him unbounded 
ascendency over the mind of the monarch. This 
terrible catastrophe took place on November 1, 1755. 
The population of the city was collected in the 
churches listening to the solemn services of All Saints 
Day, when the first shock of earthquake was felt ; it 
was followed at intervals by three others, which 
laid half the city in ruins. Most of the unfor- 
tunate people, who managed to escape from the fall- 
ing houses and churches, rushed to the quays. But 
the disturbance affected the sea also ; an immense 



35 8 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

tidal wave swept the quays, and washed off thou- 
sands of the fugitives, while the ships in the river 
were driven on shore. No element of horror was 
missing, for fires broke out in all parts of the wrecked 
city, and the scum of the populace rushed hither and 
thither, murdering and robbing those whom the cala- 
mities of nature had spared. At this fearful juncture 
the king and Carvalho showed the greatest courage 
and a most unshaken firmness of demeanour. To the 
demands of the monarch as to what was to be done, 
the minister answered laconically, " Bury the dead 
and feed the living," and for eight days and nights he 
lived in his carriage, driving from place to place, 
whithersoever his presence was needed, and repress- 
ing disorder. The news of the disaster spread all 
over Europe ; at least thirty thousand people, accord- 
ing to some accounts one hundred thousand people, 
lost their lives, and foreign nations were not back- 
ward in assisting the remnant of the people of 
Lisbon. In England the pity felt was keener than 
anywhere else, owing to the close relationship be- 
tween the two nations, and large sums of money and 
great quantities of provisions were promptly des- 
patched from London to Portugal. The catastrophe 
made an extraordinary impression on the minds of all 
contemporaries ; in London over twenty accounts 
were published within the year, apart from notices in 
magazines, and Voltaire in his " Candide " gave a full 
and, on the whole, very accurate description of it. 

Carvalho's energy at this time established his 
reputation with the king, and he felt able to com- 
mence his campaigns against the nobility and the 



THE JESUITS. 359 

Jesuits. In order that he might have his time 
free for matters of such importance he was made 
Prime Minister in 1756, with power over all depart- 
ments of administration, and his friend, Luis da 
Cunha, was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs in his place. Of his long series of administrative 
reforms, and his efforts to improve the condition of 
the country, which were spread over his government 
of twenty-seven years, it will be better to speak as a 
whole ; but a special description must here be given 
of his campaign against the Jesuits, which brought 
about the suppression of that famous order. It is 
not necessary to speculate on the various motives, 
which induced Carvalho to attack the Jesuits, but 
the principal cause lay in the fact that they were 
wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous 
force in an absolutist monarchy. It must be remem- 
bered that the Jesuits of the eighteenth century 
formed a very different class of men to their prede- 
cessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary 
pioneers, but a corporation of wealthy traders, who 
made use of their spiritual position to further the 
cause of their commerce. They had done a great 
work in America by opening up the interior of Brazil 
and converting the natives, and their administration 
of Paraguay, one of the most interesting achievements 
in the whole history of Christianity, was without 
doubt a blessing to the people. But by the middle 
of the eighteenth century they had gone too far. It 
was one thing to convert the natives of Brazil, and 
another to absorb much of the wealth of that country, 
in doing which they prejudiced not only the Crown, 



360 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

but the Portuguese people, whom they kept from 
settling in the territory under their rule. Whether it 
was a sufficient reason for Carvalho to attack the 
order because it was wealthy and powerful, and had 
departed from its primitive simplicity, is a question 
for every one to decide for themselves, but that this 
was the reason, and that the various excuses alleged 
by the admirers of the great minister are without 
foundation, is an undoubted fact. On September 19, 
1757, the first important blow was struck, when the 
king's Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits 
were forbidden to come to Court. Carvalho, in the 
name of the King of Portugal, also formally de- 
nounced the order at Rome, and Benedict XIV., the 
then Pope, appointed the Cardinal de Saldanha, a 
friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer of the 
Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in 
making up his mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade 
the Jesuits to engage in trade. 

An attempt upon the king's life, which shortly 
followed this measure, gave the minister the oppor- 
tunity he wanted for urging the suppression of the 
famous society. The history of the Tavora plot, which 
culminated in this attempt is one of the most myste- 
rious affairs in the whole history of Portugal, and from 
the many contradictory accounts which have been 
published, it is almost impossible to arrive at the exact 
truth. But it is certain that the Jesuits and the 
nobles had no reason to love the king and his minis- 
ter, and it is hardly to be wondered at that their 
opposition resulted in violent measures. The great 
nobles had been systematically deprived of all politi- 



THE TAVORA PLOT. 361 

cal power since the accession of King Joseph, for 
Carvalho, like Richelieu, distrusted them, and pre- 
ferred to employ men of his own rank in life or of 
bourgeois descent in public business in preference to 
noblemen and their relations. The three leaders of 
the plot were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of 
John II., and one of the greatest noblemen in Portu- 
gal, the Marquis of Tavora, who had filled with credit 
the post of Governor-general of India, and the Count 
of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom Luis de 
Athaide, the defender of Goa ; but the heart and soul 
of the conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a 
beautiful and ambitious woman, who was bitterly 
offended because her husband had not been made a 
duke. The confessor of this lady was a Jesuit named 
Gabriel Malagrida, who is by some authors treated as 
a half-insane fanatic, and by others as a dangerous in- 
triguer, incensed by the attacks of Carvalho upon his 
order. Whether Malagrida was innocent or guilty, 
whether he was mad or sane, whether the Tavoras 
were incited by religious or political motives, or 
merely by a desire for private revenge, whether all 
these noblemen, and especially the Duke of Aveiro, 
were not merely accused in order to allow Carvalho 
to strike a blow at the nobility, whether, finally, all 
those who were punished were victims of the minister 
or really guilty, are questions which cannot be deter- 
mined here. The evidence on all sides is most con- 
tradictory, and all that is certain is that the king was 
fired at and wounded on the night of September 3, 
1758; and that in the following January, the three 
noblemen who have been mentioned, the Marchioness 



362 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

of Tavora, Malagrida with seven other Jesuits, and 
many other individuals of all ranks of life, were 
arrested as implicated in the attempt to murder. 
The laymen had but a short trial, and, together with 
the marchioness, were publicly executed ten days 
after their arrest 

King Joseph certainly believed that the real cul- 
prits had been seized, and in his gratitude he created 
Carvalho, Count of Oeyras, and encouraged him to 
pursue his campaign against the Jesuits. On January 
I 9> l 759> the estates belonging to the society were 
sequestrated ; and on September 3rd, all its members 
were expelled from Portugal, and directions were sent to 
the viceroys of India and Brazil to expel them likewise. 
The news of this bold stroke was received with admi- 
ration everywhere, except at Rome, and it became 
noised abroad that a great minister was ruling in 
Portugal. The elder Pitt, who was anxious that 
Portugal should join in the Seven Years' War, pub- 
licly acknowledged the ability of the Count of Oeyras, 
and at his demand apologized for the infraction of 
the law of nations, which had been committed by the 
English Admiral Boscawen's attack upon the French 
squadron under La Clue, in the Portuguese harbour 
of Lagos. 

The Count of Oeyras had no desire to take part in 
the general war raging in Europe, and refused to 
accede to Pitt's wishes, until the King of Spain, ac- 
cording to the arrangement of the "Pacte de Famille," 
attacked Portugal, as being a declared enemy of the 
Franco-Spanish alliance owing to the Methuen treaty 
with England. The Spaniards under the Marquis of 



WAR BETWEEN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 363 

Sarria invaded the northern provinces of Portugal in 
1762, and captured in rapid succession the towns of 
Miranda, Braganza, and Almeida. Then the Count 
of Oeyras appealed to the English statesman, and not 
in vain. English soldiers and munitions of war were 
at once despatched to Lisbon, and, at the special 
request of the minister, a general in English pay, 
the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg, with some English 
officers and sergeants, were sent to reorganize the 
Portuguese army as Schomberg had done in the century 
before. The Count of Lippe, assisted by the energy of 
the Portuguese minister, quickly formed the Portuguese 
troops into a disciplined army, and on the arrival of 
Brigadier-General John Burgoyne, a gallant cavalry 
officer, who had distinguished himself at Belle-isle, 
but who is better known in English history from 
his surrender at Saratoga, to take command of the 
English troops, the allied army advanced. They were 
uniformly successful ; the Spaniards lost all their 
former advantages ; they were defeated at Valencia 
de Alcantara, where the English took three standards 
and a Spanish general ; and on October 5th Burgoyne 
stormed the entrenched camp of Villa Velha, and 
ended the campaign. The Spaniards were now quite 
ready to give in, and on February 10, 1763, peace was 
signed between Portugal and Spain. The Count of 
Oeyras had learnt a lesson from the contrast between 
the two campaigns, and when Burgoyne and his 
English soldiers returned to England, the Count of 
Lippe-Buckeburg was requested to remain, and he not 
only reorganized the Portuguese army, but put all the 
Portuguese fortresses on the Spanish frontier, and 



364 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

especially Elvas, in thorough repair, according to the 
received ideas of fortification. 

On the conclusion of this short war, the Count of 
Oeyras once more turned his attention to the Jesuits, 
and in 1764 the Jesuit priest Malagrida was burnt 
alive, not as a traitor, but as a heretic and impostor, 
on account of some crazy tractates he had written. 
The man was regarded as a martyr," and all com- 
munication between Portugal and the Holy See 
was broken off for two years, while the Portuguese 
minister exerted all his influence with the Courts of 
France and Spain to procure the entire suppression of 
the society, which he hated. The king supported him 
consistently, and after another attempt upon his life 
in 1769, which the minister as usual attributed to the 
Jesuits, King Joseph created his faithful servant 
Marquis of Pombal, by which title he is best known 
to fame. The prime ministers of France and Spain 
cordially acquiesced in the hatred of the Jesuits, for 
both the Due de Choiseul and the Count d'Aranda 
had something of Pombal's spirit in them, and 
imitated his policy ; in both countries the society, 
which on its foundation had done so much for 
Catholicism and Christianity, was proscribed, and 
the worthy members treated with as much rigour as 
the unworthy ; and finally in 1773 Pope Clement 
XIV. solemnly abolished the Society of Jesus. King 
Joseph did not long survive this triumph of his 
minister, for he died on February 24, 1777, and the 
Marquis of Pombal, then an old man of seventy-seven, 
was at once dismissed from office. 

To analyse the internal reforms and general 



THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY, 365 

measures of improvement introduced into Portugal 
by Pombal is almost impossible in a single paragraph, 
so far-reaching were his endeavours, so unlimited his 
energy. He has often been compared with Richelieu, 
chiefly, it seems, because of his rigorous suppression 
of the Tavora plot ; but the men whom he really 
resembled were the benevolent despots and their 
ministers who abounded in Europe before the out- 
break of the French Revolution. He firmly believed 
that the greatest happiness of a people depended 
upon the maintenance of an absolutist monarchy, 
which could do more good than representative 
institutions, and his struggle with the Jesuits was 
mainly due to the fact that they were so wealthy and 
independent, especially in Brazil, as to hamper the 
power of the Crown. The class of statesmen and 
politicians to which he belonged included such 
monarchs as Frederick the Great of Prussia, the 
Emperor Joseph II., Leopold, Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, and Charles III. of Spain, and such great 
reforming ministers as Aranda in Spain and 
Tannucci in Naples ; and like them he believed 
that real good could only be done by an absolute 
monarch, who had the interests of his people at heart. 
The greatest evidence Pombal gave of this royal 
concern for the people was in the famous decree of 
May 25, 1773, by which slavery was abolished in 
Portugal, or rather by which grandsons of slaves, and 
all children of slaves born after that date, were 
declared free, and which at the same time abolished 
all distinctions between "old" and "new" Christians, 
by which latter term the descendants of the converted 



POMBAL'S REFORMS. 3^7 

Jews and Mohammedans were still called, and made 
all Portuguese subjects alike eligible for civil, military, 
and ecclesiastical offices. In Brazil, however, he made 
no attempt to put down slavery, believing, like all his 
contemporaries, that negroes were made on purpose 
to be slaves ; but even there he repeated and enforced 
the edicts against making slaves of the natives of the 
country. In matters of internal administration he 
advocated and maintained efficiency and economy, 
and at one blow in 1761 he swept away more than 
three-quarters of the petty offices which hampered 
the administration of justice. The law courts were 
made accessible, and lawsuits cheap ; and in 1769 he 
robbed the Inquisition of its power by making it an 
open and public court, subject to the rules which 
regulated other courts. In matters of police he showed 
the same vigour, and by stern repression prevented 
the machinery of the law from being used to further 
private revenge. He recognized the importance of 
education, and reorganized the University of Coimbra 
in 1772 by abolishing the teaching of the dark ages 
which still continued there and introducing the 
modern element ; and though he expelled the great 
teaching order of the Church, he maintained the 
educational establishments of the Jesuits, and turned 
their college at Lisbon into a school for the training 
of the young nobility. Of the reforms in the army, 
which he carried out with the help of the Count of 
Lippe-Buckeburg mention has already been made, 
and he was equally energetic with regard to the 
navy, over which department he placed the most 
energetic of his subordinates, Martinho de Mello e 



368 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Castro. Nor was the great minister careless of more 
material affairs ; he showed a taste for architecture 
and building ; under his superintendence the part of 
Lisbon which had been ruined by the earthquake rose 
from its ashes in redoubled beauty, adorned with fine 
streets, squares, and buildings, generally designed by 
the famous Portuguese architect Joaquim Machado de 
Castro. He did not neglect to encourage agriculture 
and viniculture, which must ever be the source of 
livelihood of the greater number of the Portuguese 
people, and he introduced the silkworm into the 
northern provinces, and made special regulations for 
the management and encouragement of the bold 
fishermen of the Beira and the Algarves. In his 
attempt to introduce manufactures the Marquis of 
Pombal was not so successful ; the Portuguese are 
not a manufacturing people, and the system of 
protection which he enforced only roused the 
opposition of English merchants, who protested 
against it as a breach of the Methuen treaty, and 
made manufactured articles dearer than they had 
been during the first half of the century. Yet some 
of the native industries which he established or 
protected were not unworthy of his care, and the 
glass-works of Leiria, the lace of Vianna, and the 
potteries of Aveiro enjoyed a great and deserved 
reputation. In commercial matters he showed the 
result of the lessons he had learnt during his official 
residence in London, for he founded the Royal Bank 
of Portugal in 175 1, and established the Oporto 
Wine Company, against which infraction of their 
monopoly the English wine merchants loudly in- 



POMBAL AND LITERATURE. 369 

veighed. He encouraged trade with Brazil by 
granting concessions to the gold seekers and planters 
of that great colony ; and the importation of gold, 
sugar, and tobacco brought back to Lisbon some of 
the prosperity of the sixteenth century. In Asia he 
was clear-sighted enough to perceive that any 
attempt to contend for a share of the Indian or the 
spice trade was bound to be of no avail ; but he was 
the first of Portuguese statesmen to perceive the 
value of the little settlement of Macao in the Canton 
river. Most of the Chinese trade, which had been 
yearly growing in value, was in the hands of the 
factory of the English East India Company at Canton, 
but the jealousy of the Chinese Government was 
such that the Company had no assured position 
there. But Macao was a free port ; most of the 
factors and writers of the East India Company 
resided there, and Pombal, seeing that the tea trade 
passed through Portuguese territory, greatly en- 
couraged it, and took care that it should pay due 
toll to the Portuguese authorities and contribute to 
the wealth of the Portuguese Crown. Nor was the 
great minister insensible to literature and the fine 
arts. He founded the "Arcadia de Lisboa " in 1757, 
for the propagation of the teachings of the school of 
the French encyclopaedists ; and it was under his 
influence and protection that Diogo Barbosa Machado 
compiled his " Bibliotheca Lusitana " and Damiao 
Antonio de Lemos wrote his " Historia de Portugal," 
a work which stands midway between the naive 
annals of Bernardo de Brito and Antonio Brandao, 
and the modern scientific histories of Alexandra 



370 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Herculano and Rebello da Silva. Of music he was 
particularly fond ; he persuaded the king to build the 
opera house at Lisbon, and to invite the famous singer 
Cafifarelli, the confidant of the King of Spain, to sing 
there, and to him was dedicated the best Portuguese 
opera, the "Alessandre nell' Indie" of David Peres. 

Such were some of the reforms, schemes, improve- 
ments, and tastes of the great minister ; they made 
him the friend of his sovereign and the adored of 
the people ; but, on the other hand, his persecution of 
the Jesuits and his rigorous treatment of the leading 
noblemen, whom he had often imprisoned without 
trial, made him many personal enemies, and when his 
patron died he knew that his own fall was at hand. 
,King Joseph had died without male issue, and was 
succeeded on the throne by his eldest daughter, 
Donna Maria Francisca, who had married in 1760 
her own uncle Dom Pedro, a younger brother of 
King Joseph. By this arrangement it was hoped 
that all disputes as to the accession would be avoided ; 
the husband and wife were crowned together, and 
coins were struck in the joint names of Maria I. and 
Pedro III. Both the king and the queen were feeble 
and weak-minded, and the reins of government 
fell into the hands of the widow of King Joseph, 
Donna Marianna Victoria, a fanatical Catholic who 
had always resented the influence of Pombal and 
opposed his policy. By her advice the great minister 
was at once dismissed from office and ordered to send 
in his accounts, while his enemies were released from 
prison. Their names will show how powerful was 
the enmity he had to expect, for among them were 



THE DEATH OF POMBAL. 37 1 

Dom Miguel de Annunciacao, Bishop of Coimbra ; 
Dom Joao Amberto de Noronha, Count of San 
Lourenco ; Dom Joao de Almeida Portugal, Marquis 
of Alorna, a former Viceroy of India, and brother of 
the Marquis of Tavora ; Dom Martinho de Masca- 
renhas, son of the executed Duke of Aveiro ; Dom 
Jose, illegitimate brother of the late king and Grand 
Inquisitor of Portugal ; Antonio de Andrade Freire, 
the Chancellor ; Dom Frederico de Sousa Holstein ; 
and Dom Joao de Braganza, Duke of Lafoes. These 
men at once surrounded the new sovereigns and gave 
utterance to complaints against Pombal ; the pro- 
ceedings in the case of the Tavora plot were reversed, 
and the prosecution of the late minister pressed on with 
bitter hostility. Yet his enemies hardly dared to con- 
demn such a benefactor to his country to any severe 
penalty, and after being driven about from pillar to 
post for four years, the old man, now more than 
eighty years of age, was condemned to be banished 
twenty leagues from Court. Had his relentless 
persecutor, the widow of King Joseph, been alive, his 
punishment would doubtless have been more severe, 
and, as it was, the queen dared not pass such a light 
sentence until after her mother's death. The old 
minister did not long survive his disgrace, and 
died at Pombal on May 8, 1782, at the age of eighty- 
three. To the credit of Pedro and Maria let it be 
admitted at once that in consideration of his father's 
long and eminent services the young Marquis of 
Pombal was fully confirmed in all the honours and 
estates which had been conferred upon the minister 
by King Joseph. 



372 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

It need hardly be said that the fall of Pombal left 
many aspirants to his high place. The three 
Secretaries of State, M-artinho de Mello e Castro, 
Thomas Xavier de Lima Brito, Viscount of Villa 
Nova de Cerveira, afterwards Marquis of Ponte de 
Lima, and Ayres de Sa e Mello ; the Intendant of the 
Treasury, Pedro Jose de Noronha, Marquis of 
Angeja ; and the Intendant of Police, Diogo Ignacio 
de Pina Manique, had all been trained in official work 
by Pombal, and were all eager to succeed their 
master in power. None of them, however, were 
successful, for the great nobles who had been recalled 
to Court were determined to have no such supreme 
ruler again over them, while they were too jealous of 
each other and too inexperienced in affairs to take 
office themselves. Matters went on therefore at the 
commencement of the new reign much as they had 
done under the management of Pombal ; his spirit 
remained amongst the ministers, and in such 
measures as the commercial treaty with Russia, the 
lighting of Lisbon by oil lamps, and the abolition of 
imprisonment for debt, the impulse he had given to 
all reforms is clearly to be seen. The " Arcadia de 
Lisboa " was indeed allowed to disappear, but in its 
place the Duke of Lafoes established the " Academia 
Real das Sciencias " in 1779, which did even better 
work for literature by its publication of the works 
of the early Portuguese chroniclers. In carrying out 
these measures the king and queen had little share ; 
Pedro III. was a silly and vicious man, and Maria 
Francisca was a woman of weak intellect, completely 
subservient to her confessor, Ignacio de San Caetano 



THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 373 

who found her greatest happiness in raising vast 
sums of money and sending them to the Latin 
convent at Jerusalem. The only important event 
in which they took a part was their conference with 
the Court of Spain at Badajoz in 1785, when an 
arrangement was come to about the disputed frontier 
in South America ; and when Dom John, the second 
son of Pedro and Maria, was betrothed to Donna 
Carlotta Joaquina, grand-daughter of Charles III. of 
Spain. In the following year Pedro III. died, and 
his death, followed as it speedily was by those of her 
confessor and of her elder son, Dom Jose, who had 
married his aunt, Donna Maria Benedictina, completely 
upset the small amount of intellect possessed by 
Maria Francisca. It was observed in 1788 that she 
was quite unfit to transact any business ; and in 1792, 
when the progress of the French Revolution was 
setting all Europe in a blaze, Dom John found it 
necessary to take the management of affairs into his 
hands, though he was not declared regent until 1799. 
To turn from the history of Portugal in the 
eighteenth century to the history of the Portuguese 
possessions in India is a melancholy task ; for these 
possessions instead of being a source of pride were 
a source of expense and anxiety to the home 
government, and they were maintained rather from a 
recollection of ancient greatness and as a base for 
mission work than for any actual advantage derived 
from them. In 1739 Bassein, the "Capital of the 
North " as it was called, a city which had been 
second only to Goa in commercial and political 
importance, was captured by Chimnaji Apa, a 



374 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Maratha general, after a three months' siege, and 
with it fell Thana and all the possessions of the 
Portuguese on the north-west coast except Daman 
and Diu. In 1741 the Marathas and the Bhonslas of 
Sawantwarl over-ran the country round Goa and 
threatened the city, but in the moment of difficulty, 
the Marquis of Lourical arrived with twelve 
thousand men, and first defeated the Marathas at 
Bardez, and then made Khem Sawant, the ruler of 
Sawantwarl, tributary. His successes were followed 
by those of the Marquis of Castello Novo, who 
captured Alorna, Tiracol, Neutim, Rarim, and Satari; 
and the Marquis of Tavora, who took Sadashivgarh. 
But the Portuguese Government had no desire to 
make fresh conquests which it would need fresh 
supplies of money from home to defend, and the 
Count of Ega was ordered to surrender most of the 
conquered towns to their former owners. Meanwhile 
commerce had entirely deserted the Portuguese 
possessions, which were given over to the Church ; 
and Captain Hamilton in his travels, after speaking 
of the poverty of the Portuguese inhabitants, says 
that he counted no fewer than eighty churches and 
convents in Goa, and that there were no less than 
thirty thousand priests in the city and territory. 
Revenue there was none, and the two thousand 
European soldiers who defended the ancient capital 
of Alboquerque had to be paid out of the Portuguese 
treasury. The last blow was given to what little 
commerce still remained by Pombal's suppression of 
the Jesuits, and in 1759 "Golden Goa," which had 
become unhealthy and ruinous, was left to priests and 



BRAZIL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 375 

monks, and the seat of government was removed to 
Panjim. Pombal, with his practical insight, saw that 
nothing was to be made out of the Portuguese 
possessions in India, and spent all his efforts in 
Asia in promoting the prosperity of Macao ; and in 
1794, when Portugal was in difficulties in Europe, 
the Viceroy of Goa asked for the protection of 
English troops, and Goa was garrisoned by the 
English East India Company throughout the con- 
tinuance of the great war with France. 

Very different was the history of Brazil during this 
century : while India was a source of expense, Brazil 
was the great source of wealth to the Portuguese 
treasury, and was to be the refuge of the royal 
family when it became impossible for it to remain 
longer in Lisbon. Throughout the century there was 
a steady influx of immigrants to Brazil from Por- 
tugal, and the population of the great colony rapidly 
increased in numbers. Most of these immigrants 
settled down as sugar or tobacco planters, and the 
labour upon the plantations was completely in the 
hands of the negro slaves, who were imported in vast 
numbers. The trade in slaves was kept entirely in 
the hands of Portuguese merchants, in spite of the 
efforts of the English slavers, and was not only looked 
upon as a lucrative calling, but as the chief employ- 
ment for the Portuguese sailors. It was this trade 
alone which made it worth while for the Portuguese 
Government to keep up its establishments on the 
coast of Guinea, and Pombal encouraged it as the 
only means of supplying Brazil with labourers. The 
slaves in Brazil were not treated unkindly ; their 



376 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

masters were bound to feed them ; and were not only 
allowed, but were obliged to sell them their liberty, 
on the offer of a certain fixed sum of money. These 
freed slaves and the mulattoes, who were very nume- 
rous, often accumulated considerable wealth, and were 
treated as citizens in every respect, except that they 
could not hold any civil or municipal office. They 
were even enrolled as soldiers, but the mulatto regi- 
ments were kept distinct from the European, and 
officered from among the wealthy members of their 
own class. The native Brazilians were treated even 
more favourably, and by the great decree of 1755 
they were not only forbidden to sell themselves as 
slaves, but were made citizens in every respect, and 
allowed to receive their education at the University 
of Coimbra. The importance of the discovery of 
gold in the interior has been mentioned, and the 
revenue to the Portuguese Crown from the king's fifth, 
in spite of much fraud, was estimated at ^300,000 a 
year. The opening up of the interior led, about the 
year 1750, to the conquest of the Paulist Republic. 
This curious little state had been formed round the 
city of St. Paul about the commencement of the 
eighteenth century by fugitives from Brazil and from 
the more oppressive Spanish Governments of Chile 
and Peru. The town was originally founded far up 
in the heart of the virgin forests beyond the jurisdic- 
tion of the Portuguese and Spanish officials, where 
the inhabitants led a wild, romantic life, tempered 
only by lynch law. But by degrees the march of 
civilization brought them in contact with the Portu- 
guese Government, and the discovery of diamonds in 



PROSPERITY OF BRAZIL. 377 

the vicinity led to the suppression of the little republic. 
This discovery of diamonds further increased the 
wealth of the Portuguese Crown, and in addition to 
the royal right to every diamond above twenty carats 
weight, the king was estimated to make an income 
of ^"100,000 a year by a contract entered into with 
a syndicate of English diamond buyers. Nor were 
other precious stones lacking, for rubies, emeralds, 
and topazes were all discovered in such large quanti- 
ties in the latter half of the eighteenth century as to 
seriously lower their price. The great colony was 
ruled most wisely ; only a few of the superior officers 
were sent from Portugal, and most offices were filled 
from among the settlers themselves. It was not even 
found necessary to send troops from Portugal, for a 
regular army of sixteen thousand men, and a militia 
of over twenty thousand were easily raised and paid 
in the country itself. The only troubles which beset 
the colony were caused by the indefiniteness of its 
boundaries, and Portugal found it necessary to yield 
much territory, which has since developed into 
wealthy and prosperous republics to the encroach- 
ments of Spain. Its importance was recognized by 
the title of Prince of Brazil granted to the eldest son 
of the King of Portugal since the days of John IV., 
and it became a safe refuge for the exiled royal family 
when events in Europe made it necessary for it to fly 
from Lisbon. 

In literature the Portuguese writers of the eigh- 
teenth century followed and imitated the French 
authors of the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. 
instead of striving to develop the characteristics of 



37% PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

their own nation. The " Academia Real de Lisboa," 
the " Academia Real de Portugal," the "Arcadia de 
Lisboa," and the " Academia Real das Sciencias," 
which succeeded each other at short intervals, were 
all attempts to imitate the French Academy and its 
offshoots, and though they did good work in encou- 
raging research and rewarding literary endeavour, 
they failed, as such institutions generally do fail, to 
produce great writers and thinkers. At the beginning 
of the eighteenth century, before the academies exer- 
cised their influence, the only literary productions in 
Portugal were lyric poems of no great merit, which 
were much admired by the members of numerous 
little literary clubs resembling the Italian arcadias, 
and which were chiefly imitations of the forms of 
verse most in vogue in France and Italy. But 
during the rule of Pombal a more healthy spirit 
appeared ; the works of the French encyclopaedists 
and their contemporaries were studied instead of 
tricks of versification, and a new departure was 
made alike in poetry and prose. The new poets 
did not confine themselves to lyrics ; they attempted 
epics, dramas, and eclogues, all more or less based 
upon an imitation of the French, but yet pos- 
sessing a more truly national ring than the lyrics 
of their predecessors. All these poets were not 
lovers of Pombal ; the great minister was too 
heedless of hurting their susceptibilities and too 
sparing of his pensions for that ; and the best known 
among them, Antonio Diniz da Cruz e Silva, who 
was termed the Portuguese Boileau, vehemently 
attacked the great man after his fall. The influence 



LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 379 

exerted by this poet on the progress of Portuguese 
literature was, however, slight compared to that of 
his successors, Francisco Manoel de Nascimento and 
Manoel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, whose followers 
under the names of the " Filintists " and " Elma- 
nists " preached freedom from the rigour of the 
French canons of criticism, and adherence to 
national forms. Epic poetry was not neglected, 
though none of its writers can compare with the 
great Camoens, whose " Lusiads " were several times 
reprinted with notes during this century. The fame 
of the great Portuguese epic was indeed spread 
abroad throughout Europe ; it was translated into 
French by Duperron de Castera and by the French 
critic La Harpe; into Dutch by L. S. Pieterzoon; and 
into English by Mickle who, as a translator of their 
master-poet, was cordially received at the Portuguese 
Court in 1780. Nor was the drama forgotten ; the 
Portuguese stage was held by tragedies after the French 
classical model, the subjects of which were gene- 
rally borrowed from the annals of the country, of which 
the titles of the three tragedies of Du Bocage, 
" Viriato," " Affonso Henriques," and " Vasco da 
Gama," may be cited as a proof. In prose, the 
most valuable work was done in history, and the 
editions of the old Portuguese chroniclers, Ruy de 
Pina, Azurara, Fernao Lopes, and Acenheiro, 
edited for the " Academia Real das Sciencias," 
by Jose Correa de Serra still remain the standard 
editions. Nor was science neglected in the country 
of Pedro Nunes ; Bartholomeu de Gusmao is as- 
serted to have discovered ballooning in 1709, 



380 PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

years before the Montgolfiers commenced their 
experiments ; and the botanists Felix de Avellar 
Brotero and Antonio Correa da Silva, to mention 
but one department of scientific activity, were well 
known throughout Europe, and were members of 
most of the scientific societies of the time. In the 
arts mention has already been made of David Peres, 
the musical composer, and of Joaquim Machado de 
Castro, the architect ; the latter was in addition the 
best sculptor of his country, and Domingos Antonio 
de Sequeira, as a painter, will compare favourably 
with most of the contemporary artists in Europe. 

But though the influence of France is to be per- 
ceived in every department of literature until the 
revival of national poetry by Nascimento and Du 
Bocage, the Portuguese people remained, owing to 
the Methuen treaty, on much more intimate terms 
with the English. The royal family might hanker 
after matrimonial alliances with Spain, a great 
minister, like Pombal, might resent the absorption of 
Portuguese trade by England ; but, for all that, the 
people felt how close were their bonds with the 
English nation. Mention has been made of the influx 
of English capital, of the wine merchants of Oporto, 
and the English factory at Lisbon, and also of the 
power exercised by the English ambassadors. But 
there was a closer bond than that ; Portugal became 
the sanitarium for England ; it was to Portugal that 
the seekers after a milder climate resorted as they 
would now do to the Riviera, and it was to Lisbon 
that the great English novelist, Henry Fielding, to 
mention but one of many invalids, was sent ; it was 



PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 381 

in Lisbon that he died, and he is buried in the 
cemetery of the English factory there. These were 
the bonds that bound the two peoples together, and 
the Portuguese people were justified in counting 
upon the armed help of England in the terrible 
struggle which they were now to pass through. 




XVII. 

THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION— THE 
PENINSULAR WAR. 

WHEN Dom John took the government of Portugal 
into his hands in 1792, popular attention was con- 
centrated throughout Europe on the progress of the 
French Revolution. The interest excited in Portugal 
was as great as it was everywhere else, for the ideas, 
which were at the bottom of the most important 
movement of modern times, had been eagerly 
received in the literary circles of Lisbon. It is 
absurd to suppose that there was any great 
democratic party in the country, for as long as 
the administration was well carried on, and taxes 
were not oppressive, the mass of the people were 
absolutely indifferent as to the nature of the govern- 
ment. It was different with regard to the more 
educated classes, who had been brought up in the 
doctrines of the encyclopaedists, and who had read 
Rousseau and Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu. 
These men were sceptical about the advantages of a 
benevolent despotism ; they had studied the history of 
their own nation, and knew that in former days, before 
the discovery of gold in Brazil, the Cortes had been 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 383 

frequently summoned, and they desired that it should 
meet regularly, and that the Portuguese people 
should once more take a part in legislation by 
means of its old representative assembly. Some of 
them went further, and inspired by the example of 
the great American Revolution, dreamed of a 
republic, while others adopted all the fantastic 
political and social ideas of Rousseau. But these 
men were mere theorists ; they were to be found only 
among a small circle of educated noblemen and 
bourgeois in Lisbon and Oporto ; and their fancies 
were quite unknown to the mass of the population. 
These w r ere the men who hailed with joy the capture 
of the Bastille, and the proceedings of the Constituent 
Assembly, and who openly expressed their sympathy 
with the new order of things in France. 

The government failed to understand that these 
sympathizers would not be able to follow the example 
of the French revolutionary leaders, so long as the 
general population of Portugal was contented and 
happy, and like all the absolutist monarchs of 
Europe, Dom John heard with the utmost horror 
of the events passing in Paris, and feared that they 
would be imitated in Lisbon. In his terror of the 
spread of " French principles," he began to persecute 
their admirers although they had never dreamed of 
acting or conspiring, and he thus made martyrs of 
the holders of the new opinions, which were only 
propagated the more rapidly by his tyrannical 
behaviour. In his crusade against the sympathizers 
with the French Revolution, Dom John found his 
chief ally in Diogo Ignacio de Pina Manique, the 




* s 



OPPOSITION TO " FRENCH PRINCIPLES." 385 

Intendant of Police, who believed that by his vigour 
he should obtain the ascendency formerly held by 
Pombal, and who proceeded therefore to work upon 
his master's fears. His first measure was to issue an 
edict against aliens, under which he expelled two 
Frenchmen, Pierre Noel and Pierre Louis Fontaine, 
and kept a strict and irritating surveillance over 
Edward Church, the United States Consul, and 
Jacome Ratton, a merchant of Lisbon, whom he 
declared to be the fomenters of discontent and the 
leaders of a conspiracy. Against Portuguese sub- 
jects, Pina Manique acted with still more severity ; 
Francisco Coelho da Silva, the father of Portuguese 
liberalism, was thrown into prison ; other men of letters 
were suspected and often, prosecuted, including the 
poets, Nascimento and Du Bocage, the botanist 
Avellar Brotero, and the historian Correa da Serra ; 
many noblemen of liberal principles were watched 
by spies, and the Duke of Lafo€s, the great patron 
of literature, was expelled from Court, because he was 
a friend of Broussonet, the French chemist. The men 
whom the Intendant of Police most abhorred were 
the Freemasons whom he hated, because their society 
was secret, and by his attempt to suppress all their 
lodges he made them actively democratic, and the 
chief promoters of " French principles." It was no 
wonder that this conduct excited attention in France, 
and when in January, 1793, three months after the 
proclamation of the French Republic, the Girondin 
deputy, Kersaint, inveighed against England in the 
Convention, he abused Portugal also, and spoke of 
that country as a province of England. 



386 THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

Dom John, not satisfied with thus combating 
" French principles " at home, believed it to be a 
holy duty to join in the general war against France, 
and he therefore rejected the advice of the English 
ministry to remain neutral, and sent his Secretary 
of State for Foreign Affairs, Luis Pinto de Sousa 
Coutinho, to Madrid to beg leave to send an army to 
join in the invasion of France. It need hardly be 
said that the Spanish minister, the Count of Florida 
Blanca, was only too glad to accept assistance, and a 
treaty of alliance between the two countries was signed 
at Aranjuez on March 25, 1793. It was vain for the 
French revolutionary leaders to protest that they had 
not injured Portugal and to ask for neutrality ; the 
French Ambassador, M. d'Arbaud, was ordered to 
leave Lisbon ; a corps of five thousand men under 
General Joao Forbes-Skelater was sent to join the 
Spanish army in the invasion of Roussillon ; and a 
squadron of eight ships of war under the Marquis of 
Niza joined the English fleet in the Mediterranean. 
The Portuguese contingent served gallantly in 
the Eastern Pyrenees from November, 1793, to 
1795, and shared alike in the success of General 
Ricardos, and the defeats of General La Union and 
General Urrutia, but nevertheless the Spanish Court 
under the influence of the handsome but worthless 
guardsman, Godoy, did not hesitate to desert its ally, 
and made a separate treaty with the French Republic 
at Basle in July, 1795. Dom John began to believe that 
the war against the French Republic could not be holy, 
since the Most Catholic king had made a treaty 
with France, and he promptly sent Dom Diogo de 



SIR CHARLES STUART SENT TO PORTUGAL. 387 

v Noronha to Paris to sue for peace. But the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety had no idea of making terms 
with him ; the treaties signed at Basle had been part 
of a deliberate policy, which was to convert Prussia 
and Spain into allies of the Republic, and to unite all 
three against Austria, England, and Portugal, which 
was regarded as a province of England, and the 
Portuguese ambassador was dismissed immediately. 
After the Convention ceased its long session and 
the Directory was appointed, Dom John made 
another effort for peace, and sent Antonio de 
Araujo de Azevedo, the head of what may be called 
the French party at the Court of Lisbon, to Paris. He 
met with no better reception than his predecessor, 
and when after the treaty of San Ildefonso, by which 
Spain declared war against England in 1796, came 
the news of a secret convention between the French 
ambassador at Madrid, General Perignon, and Godoy, 
Prince of the Peace, by which Portugal was to be 
divided between those two powers, and Spanish 
troops were being massed upon the Portuguese 
frontier, the English party in the Portuguese ministry 
gained the upper hand, and urgent supplications were 
sent to England for help. 

Pitt and Grenville were only too glad to comply ; 
for they regarded Portugal as affording an important 
base of operations in the peninsula. The House of 
Commons voted Portugal a subsidy of £200,000 ; a 
force of six thousand men was despatched under 
the command of Major-General the Honourable Sir 
Charles Stuart, which deterred the Spaniards from 
attempting an invasion, and the Prince of Waldeck, 



388 THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

like the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg in former days, 
was sent to re-organize the Portuguese army. This 
policy caused the French Directors to hesitate, and 
they signed a treaty of peace with the Portuguese 
ambassador Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo ; but to 
their wrath and surprise, Dom John refused to ratify 
the treaty, on which the Directors imprisoned the 
Portuguese ambassador in the Temple. In the ardour 
of his alliance with England, the prince for a year or 
two threw himself into the hands of the English party 
at his Court, and on the death of Martinho de Mello e 
Castro, he appointed Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, 
the leader of that party, to the Secretaryship of State 
for the Marine and Colonies. Yet the English party 
could not win the day entirely. The prince wavered ; 
at his request Sir Charles Stuart and the English 
army were withdrawn ; and he made another attempt 
to make peace with France through the mediation of 
Spain. This was the situation of affairs when Dom 
John formally declared himself Regent in 1799, as it 
became obvious that the Queen Maria Francisca 
would never recover the use of her faculties ; and in 
the same year General Napoleon Bonaparte made his 
coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire, and became ruler of 
France with the title of First Consul. 

The accession of Napoleon to power was of no 
advantage to Portugal ; from the very first he showed 
his hatred of the little country ; no amount of sub- 
mission could win his friendship ; he persisted in 
regarding Portugal, as the Convention, the Committee 
of Public Safety, and the Directory had done, as a 
province of England ; and he thoroughly understood 



THE TREATY OF BADAJOZ. 389 

what an important base of operations it afforded 
to the English armies. Hardly was Napoleon firmly- 
seated in office, when he despatched his brother 
Lucien Bonaparte to Madrid in the year 1800 with 
directions to negotiate with Portugal. He was to 
insist on the abandonment of the English alliance, on 
the opening of Portuguese ports to France and the 
closing of them to England, on the grant of special 
commercial advantages to French merchants, on the 
extension of French Guiana to the Amazon, on the 
cession of a part of Portugal to Spain until the 
recovery from the English of Trinidad and Minorca, 
and on the payment of a large sum of money, and 
he was authorized to offer Spain the assistance of 
French troops if these hard terms were rejected. The 
Prince Regent did reject them and declared war 
against Spain on February 10, 1801, and twenty- 
two thousand French veterans at once entered the 
peninsula under the command of Bonaparte's 
brother-in-law, General Leclerc. The campaign was 
a very short one ; the French soldiers never came into 
action, but in the month of May the Spaniards took 
Olivenca, Juromenha, and Campo Mayor, laid siege 
to Elvas, and defeated the Portuguese in two 
engagements at Arronches and Flor da Rosa. The 
Portuguese sued for peace, and on June 6, 1801, 
a treaty was signed at Badajoz, by which Olivenca 
and the surrounding district was ceded to Spain, 
followed by another at Paris, by which French 
Guiana was extended to the Amazon. Napoleon was 
very dissatisfied with the peace of Badajoz, for he 
aimed at nothing short of the extinction of the 



390 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

independence of Portugal, and it was many months 
before he consented to ratify the treaties. Mean- 
while an English force under Colonel Henry Clinton 
had occupied Madeira, and a force of the English 
East India Company's troops garrisoned Goa. The 
pride of the people of Portugal was deeply wounded 
by the loss of Olivenca, which had been an integral 
part of Portugal ever since the days of Affonso 
Henriques, and they lost no opportunity of showing 
their contempt for the Prince Regent and his 
advisers. Their wrath was kindled against the 
French, and from this time forth, the mass of the 
people who did not care for politics, but who did under- 
stand the meaning of national disgrace, was ready to 
dare anything against the nation which had brought 
about the disintegration of the fatherland. 

The Treaty of Amiens gave Europe a moment's 
breathing space ; the English evacuated Madeira, and 
the Prince Regent determined on a policy of absolute 
neutrality. But Napoleon was not to be moved ; he 
had determined on the destruction of Portugal, and it 
was with the full expectation that he would irritate the 
Portuguese into declaring war, that he sent General 
Lannes, one of the most courageous, but one of the 
roughest and least educated of his generals, as ambas- 
sador to Lisbon. Lannes acted in accordance with the 
expectations of his chief ; he insulted the Portuguese 
Court ; he failed to observe the most ordinary customs 
of diplomatic courtesy ; and he finally demanded the 
instant dismissal of all the ministers who belonged to 
the English party, and especially of Pina Manique, the 
Intendant of Police, because he had in former days 



THE FRENCH PARTY IN POWER. 39 1 

prosecuted the admirers of the French Revolution. 
The Prince Regent obeyed > both from fear of France 
and dislike of the high-handed naval policy of 
England ; and Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the 
head of the French party, became Secretary of State 
for Foreign Affairs, with the Count of Villa Verde, 
and the Viscount of Anadia as his colleagues, and 
Lucas de Scabra da Silva succeeded Pina Manique. 
Even this humble and prompt submission did not 
satisfy Napoleon, and in 1804 ne replaced General 
Lannes by General Junot, whom he ordered to insist 
upon Portugal's declaring war against England. For 
a time, however, he thought it wise to postpone his 
designs against the country, which he regarded as the 
most vulnerable province of England, while he was 
engaged in his great campaigns in Germany, and he 
even signed a treaty of neutrality with the Portuguese 
Government. The English were not inclined to submit 
to this, and in 1806, Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent, 
General the Earl of Rosslyn, and General Simcoe were 
sent to Lisbon to remind the Prince Regent of the 
ancient alliance between the two countries, and to 
promise ample assistance if Portugal would declare 
war against France. Dom John declined, and on 
the advice of his ministers, treated the English 
ambassadors with something like contempt. 

At length, in 1807, having defeated the armies of 
Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Napoleon again turned 
his thoughts to his projects for the annihilation of 
Portugal, which had become more than ever a thorn 
in his side, since it refused to co-operate in his Conti- 
nental System for the commercial ruin of England. 



392 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

He resolved at first to act with Spain and Godoy, as 
Perignon and Lucien Bonaparte had done, and on the 
29th of October, 1807, he signed the Treaty of 
Fontainebleau, by which it was agreed that Portugal 
should be conquered by the combined armies of 
France and Spain, and that the northern provinces of 
the country should be given to the King of Etruria, 
in exchange for his Italian kingdom, which Napoleon 
desired to annex, while the southern districts were to 
be formed into an independent kingdom for Godoy, 
Prince of the Peace, and the central provinces were to 
be held by France. The signature of this treaty was 
followed by immediate action. Junot moved rapidly 
across Spain with a French army, and in conjunction 
with a Spanish force, under General Caraffa, invaded 
Portugal along the line of the Tagus, while General 
Taranco and General Solano, with two other Spanish 
armies occupied the Entre Minho e Douro and the 
Alemtejo. With amazing rapidity Junot accomplished 
his march, and the Portuguese people hardly realized 
that war was imminent, until on the 29th of November, 
Colonel Le Cor rushed into Lisbon with the news that 
French soldiers were in possession of Abrantes. This 
alarming intelligence completely unnerved the Prince 
Regent, who listened to the strongly-worded advice 
of Sir Sidney Smith, the commander of an English 
squadron in the Tagus, to abandon his capital for 
Brazil, and to leave the English to defend Portugal. 
Dom John believed this the best course to pursue, and 
after naming a Council of Regency, he went on board 
an English ship with his wife, DonnaCarlotta Joaquina, 
his two sons, Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel, his six 



JUNOT CONQUERS PORTUGAL. 393 

daughters, and his unhappy mother, Queen Maria 
Francisca, whose disordered brain seemed to under- 
stand what was going on, and whose resistance to 
the efforts to remove her was painful to observe. The 
English ships had hardly left their moorings in the 
Tagus, when Junot at the head of two thousand 
wearied French soldiers, who had survived the fearful 
fatigue of his rapid march, entered Lisbon on the 
30th of November, 1807. 

Nothing shows more certainly the great advance of 
what were called " French principles " — that is to say, 
of democratic ideas — in Portugal during the last few 
years, than the cordial reception which Junot received. 
At Santarem he was welcomed by a deputation of 
the Freemasons of Portugal, who had been made by 
persecution, as in other continental countries, a 
secret society for the propagation of democratic 
ideas ; the army made no attempt to resist ; neither 
villages nor towns rose in insurrection ; and the 
Council of Regency, which consisted of the Marquis 
of Abrantes, the Marquis of Olhao, General 
Francisco da Cunha e Menezes, General Francisco 
Xavier de Noronha, Principal Castro, and Pedro de 
Mello Breyner, President of the Treasury, instantly 
submitted. The people of Lisbon had been disgusted 
with the wavering and unpatriotic policy of the Prince 
Regent ; they complained with reason that he had 
wasted time in diplomacy instead of preparing for 
defence ; they contrasted his yielding to Spain at the 
Treaty of Badajoz with the gallant conduct of John I., 
and the successful wars of John IV. ; and they looked 
upon his departure for Brazil as a base desertion of 




7 



MARSHAL JUNOT, DUKE OF ABRANTES. 

{Front a Print of the period. ) 



JUNOT'S CONDUCT IN PORTUGAL. 395 

his country. For all these reasons they welcomed 
the French, and the democratic leaders hoped that 
the Emperor Napoleon would annex their country, 
and grant it representative institutions. Junot at 
first acted with the greatest prudence ; he certainly 
raised two millions of francs in Lisbon by requisition, 
and seized all the money in the royal treasury, but at 
the .same time he gratified the Portuguese people by 
refusing to give the Spaniards any of the plunder, and 
he encouraged them in the belief that the Emperor 
would not destroy their independence. His next step 
was to disband the whole Portuguese army, and to 
quarter French troops in all the more important cities 
and fortresses. Not satisfied with this, Junot then 
raised a powerful Portuguese force, consisting of two 
divisions of infantry, two regiments of cagadores or 
light infantry, and three regiments of cavalry, which 
he despatched to . France under the command of 
Lieutenant-General Dom Pedro de Almada, Marquis 
of Alorna, and Major-General Gomes Freire de 
Andrade. This force which was known as the 
Portuguese Legion, contained all the most disciplined 
officers and soldiers of the nation, and did gallant 
service under Napoleon throughout the French cam- 
paigns in Spain, Germany, and Russia, and the remnant 
of it served under his standards at Waterloo. Thus 
freed from the presence of the most dangerous element 
of resistance, Junot began to show his own disposition. 
He now made no effort to conciliate the Portuguese 
democrats, and laughed at their idea of a Portuguese 
constitution ; he hoisted the tricolour flag on the 
Citadel of St. George ; he divided the country into 



396 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

military governments under his generals ; and finally 
on the 1st of February, 1807, he issued a proclamation 
" that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign." 

After issuing this proclamation the French took 
entire possession of Portugal ; the alcaides were dis- 
missed, and the French generals ruled with absolute 
authority as military governors. A new regency was 
formed, which included several Frenchmen, notably 
Junot himself as president, General Herman, M. 
Lhuillier, and Viennot de Vaublanc as Secretary- 
General ; and a new ministry was constituted of friends 
to the French alliance, consisting of Pedro de Mello 
Breyner at the Home Office, Azevedo at the Treasury, 
the Count of Sampaio at the War Office, and 
Principal Castro at the Ministry of Justice. Junot 
then began to intrigue for the throne of Portugal ; he 
knew well that Napoleon had no intention of carrying 
out the terms of the treaty of Fontainebleau ; and he did 
not see why, after his successful campaign, he should 
not receive this great reward. He posed as a patron of 
letters, and was elected President of the " Academia 
Real das Sciencias " in the place of the Duke of 
Lafoes ; he changed his attitude towards and made 
extravagant promises to the radical party ; and in the 
hope of succeeding the Braganzas, he reduced 
Napoleon's requisition of forty millions of francs to 
twenty millions, on his own authority. The chief agent, 
through whom he negotiated, was a lawyer, named 
Jose de Scabra, who got up a deputation to visit 
Napoleon, headed by the Grand Inquisitor, the Bishop 
of Leiria, to ask for the nomination of Junot as King of 
Portugal. These efforts of Junot's were, however, of no 



THE PORTUGUESE REBEL AGAINST THE FRENCH. 397 

avail. The tyranny of his generals, and their treatment 
of the Portuguese as a conquered people ; the atro- 
cities which the French soldiers committed, and their 
deliberate insults to the dearest sentiments of a proud 
nation, far outweighed the effect of Junot's policy. 
General Thomieres, for instance, plundered the great 
abbey of Alcobaga, and destroyed the corpses of the 
early kings of Portugal ; and General Loison trampled 
on the people, and put down a little riot at Mafra 
with most frightful cruelty. There were exceptions 
to this behaviour of course. General Travot and 
General Chariot made themselves popular by their 
just administration ; but, as a rule, the conduct of the 
French generals was rapacious in the extreme. At 
this moment, when the Portuguese people were quiver- 
ing with indignation, came the news of the rebellion 
in Spain, and of the victory of Baylen. The Spanish 
general, Bellesta, who commanded at Oporto in suc- 
cession to General Taranco, seized the French gover- 
nor, General Quesnel, and handed him over to a 
Portuguese junta, and then marched away into 
Gallicia. It was on the 18th of June, when the French 
had held Portugal for about nine months, that this 
great event occurred. Antonio Jose de Castro, Bishop 
of Oporto, was declared president of the "junta" of 
that city. The example was followed from Braga to 
Faro ; everywhere the French officers were murdered 
or expelled, and independent "juntas" were formed. 
At this juncture the Portuguese people felt that they 
could not resist France by their own strength ; and 
the Bishop of Oporto appealed to the old ally of 
Portugal, England, for assistance. 



SIR A. WELLESLEY LANDS IN PORTUGAL. 399 

The English Government willingly listened to this 
appeal ; they had long wished for a base on the Con- 
tinent from which to act against Napoleon by land, 
and, in the words of Canning, " the arm of Great 
Britain became the lever, and Portugal the fulcrum, to 
wrench from its basis the power that had subdued the 
rest of Europe." In the previous year, a force under 
Colonel Beresford had occupied Madeira, but up to 
this time, no attempt had been made to dislodge the 
French from Portugal itself. On the receipt of this 
appeal from Oporto however, a small army, which 
had been collected at Cork under the command of 
Lieutenant - .General the Honourable Sir Arthur 
Wellesley, for an expedition to South America, was 
ordered instead to proceed to Portugal ; reinforce- 
ments were collected at Ramsgate and Harwich, and 
a division under Major- General Brent Spencer was 
ordered to sail from Gibraltar to join him. A Lusi- 
tanian Legion was also formed out of the Portuguese 
who happened to be in England, and despatched to 
Portugal under the command of Colonel Sir Robert 
Wilson and Colonel Mayne. It was indeed time that 
help should arrive ; all the best troops and most skilled 
officers had been sent out of Portugal in the Portu- 
guese Legion to join the Grand Army of France, 
and the undisciplined peasants and apprentices hastily 
collected by the "juntas" were easily defeated in 
many places by the French veterans. Sir Arthur 
Wellesley landed at the mouth of the Mondego River, 
and advanced southwards upon Lisbon. He first de- 
feated Laborde's division at Rolica on the 17th of 
August, 1808 ; and, after receiving reinforcements, he 



400 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

routed Junot himself at Vimeiro on the 2 1st of August. 
These victories were followed by the Convention of 
Cintra, by which Junot agreed to evacuate Portugal 
and surrender all the fortresses in his possession, on 
condition that his troops and their plunder should be 
transported safe to France. This convention, how- 
ever disappointing from a military point of view to the 
English authorities, was eminently satisfactory to the 
Portuguese people, who saw themselves delivered 
from the French, as speedily as they had been 
conquered by them. 

The former Council of Regency, nominated by the 
Prince Regent before his departure, was re-established 
at Lisbon, and at once began to quarrel with the "junta" 
of Oporto, but both bodies perceived how dependent 
they were on the English Government, and the 
Regency sent Domingos Antonio de Sousa Coutinho 
to London to ask that an English ambassador with 
full powers should be accredited to Lisbon, and that 
Sir Arthur Wellesley might be appointed to re- 
organize their army. In compliance with these 
requests the Right Honourable J. C. Villiers was sent 
as ambassador to Lisbon, and, as Sir Arthur Wellesley 
could not be spared, Major- General Beresford, who 
had learnt the Portuguese language, when governor of 
Madeira, was sent to command and discipline the 
Portuguese troops. Meanwhile, Portugal was" again 
exposed to the attacks of the French ; when 
Sir John Moore advanced to Salamanca, he had 
left very few English troops behind, and Napoleon 
ordered three French armies to invade the country 
by different routes. Of these armies only one 



THE FRENCH DRIVEN OUT OF PORTUGAL. 401 

actually entered Portugal, that from the north under 
the command of Marshal Soult. Parties of the 
Lusitanian Legion, under Sir Robert Wilson and 
Baron Eben, made a spirited resistance, and even the 
unorganized Portuguese levies, under General Antonio 
de Silveira, showed courage, if not discipline ; but their 
efforts were in vain, and Soult occupied Oporto. 
Fortunately for the Portuguese, Soult, like Junot, was 
led away by the idea of becoming King of Portugal, 
and did not advance on Lisbon, while Lapisse and 
Victor did not support him by entering the Beira and 
the Alemtejo, as they had been ordered to do, and 
this delay gave time for Sir Arthur Wellesley to reach 
the Tagus with a powerful English army. On the 
1 2th of May, 1809, he drove Soult out of Oporto, and 
into Gallicia ; and after this success he invaded Spain, 
and defeated Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Victor 
at the battle of Talavera. 

From these successes of the English general, it is 
necessary to turn to the condition of the Portuguese 
regency. After the departure of the Prince Regent, 
all the able men of the English party and the trained 
administrators had left Portugal for Brazil ; the 
leaders of. the radical party were either in disgrace, or 
had fled to France, and none were left to compose the 
regency save a set of intriguers, whose chief idea was 
to get as much money from England as possible, and 
convey it into their own pockets. The Portuguese 
people acted very differently ; they were indignant at 
the outrageous conduct of the French soldiery, and 
were ready to sacrifice their lives for the national 
cause. This enthusiasm was reported to the English 



402 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

Government, which determined to take ten thousand 
Portuguese soldiers into English pay, and to send out 
a number of English regimental officers to discipline 
and command them. No better man than Beresford 
could have been selected as commander-in-chief of 
the Portuguese army. He proved himself in after- 
years, and especially at the battle of Albuera, to be 
but a poor general ; but as an organizer his firmness, 
which almost amounted to severity, made him at once 
obeyed and feared. His chief assistants in this work 
were the English officers who had been sent to him, 
and a small body of Portuguese officers whom 
patriotism had forced into exile in preference to 
serving in the French Portuguese Legion, and at the 
head of these two classes were his Quartermaster- 
General, Major-General Benjamin D'Urban, an Eng- 
lishman, and his Adjutant-General, Colonel Manoel 
de Brito Mousinho, a Portuguese. So hard did 
Beresford work during the winter of 1809, while Lord 
Wellington, as Sir Arthur Wellesleyhad been created, 
was in Spain, that in the spring of 18 10, certain 
Portuguese regiments were brigaded with the English, 
and showed themselves worthy of the honour. They 
fought side by side with the English soldiers at the 
battle of Busaco, and the behaviour of the 8th Portu- 
guese Infantry is one of the most disputed points in 
the history of that battle, every historian of the war 
stating that it behaved well, but all differing as to 
the time it came into action, and the effect of its 
bayonet charge. 

While Beresford was doing this good work, and the 
flower of the Portuguese youth was rushing to arms 




A FEMALE PEASANT FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CALDAS 
DA RAINHA. 

{From Kinsey^s " Portugal Illustrated" 1829.) 



404 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

in the regular army, or in the militia reserve, the 
regency at Lisbon was going from bad to worse. 
The Prince Regent at Rio de Janeiro had no control 
over it, and it was divided into parties, which quar- 
relled over the disposition of the English subsidies as 
if they were legitimate spoil. There is no need to 
study the intrigues of these parties, but it is worth 
notice, that Dom Pedro de Sousa Holstein, better 
known in after-years as the Duke of Palmella, was 
despatched to the Spanish junta to claim the Regency 
of Spain for Donna Carlotta Joaquina the Queen of 
Portugal, when Portugal could not even defend its 
own territory. Neither Wellington nor Beresford 
could work with this factious regency, and the English 
cabinet had to insist that the English ambassador at 
Lisbon, Sir Charles Stuart, the son of General the 
Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, should receive a seat 
upon the council. His great ability and tact soon 
made him the master of his colleagues, and a certain 
portion of the money, sent by England to pay the 
Portuguese troops, did at last find its way to its proper 
destination. The Regency, even when thus strength- 
ened, failed to become popular ; it was hotly criticized 
and abused ; and the murmuring radical party in 
Lisbon, which hankered after peace with France, was 
only suppressed by the deportation of eighteen leading 
journalists to the Azores in September, 1810. 

It is little wonder that some opposition to the war 
existed in 1810, for in that year the most formidable 
invasion of French troops took place. This was the 
famous invasion of Massena. The Portuguese nation 
showed all the valour of a people, fighting for its very 



THE PORTUGUESE ARMY. 405 

existence as a nation, and when Lord Wellington, on 
being obliged to retire into the lines of Torres Vedras, 
commanded the peasants to abandon their homes and 
leave nothing for the French to subsist upon, they 
obeyed him with touching fidelity. While Wellington 
was entrenched within his lines, Beresford established 
his headquarters at Lisbon, and continued the work 
of reorganization with the help of a fresh contingent 
of English regimental officers, which reached him at 
this time. He proceeded rapidly, but in regular order, 
and having organized and disciplined the Portuguese 
regiments in the winter of 1809, he made them 
into independent Portuguese brigades in the winter 
of 1 8 10. In all he formed a powerful Portuguese 
army of twelve infantry brigades, partly commanded 
by English brigadiers, such as Ashworth, Pack, Brad- 
ford, and Archibald Campbell, partly by native officers, 
such as Le Cor, Fonseca, Palmeirim, and Bernadim 
Ribeiros, four cavalry brigades, under Povoa and 
Barbacena, Madden and Hawker, and an artillery 
park of forty-eight guns under Colonel Alexander 
Dickson. While Beresford was engaged at Lisbon in 
organizing the Portuguese army, the Portuguese 
militia was doing good work in the northern provinces, 
where the chief command was held by Major-General 
Manoel Pinto Bacellar. Brigades of militia under 
such dashing commanders as Antonio de Silveira, 
John Miller, Nicholas Trant, and John Wilson, 
harassed Massena's lines of communication with Spain ; 
and while he was before the lines of Torres Vedras 
and at Santarem, he had to keep three divisions em- 
ployed in keeping open his line of retreat and escort- 



406 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

ing his convoys. In the field, the Portuguese militia 
was always defeated, but Massena could never feel 
safe from their attacks, and to mention but one 
brilliant exploit, Trant's capture of Coimbra seriously 
inconvenienced him at a critical moment. 

Finally in the March of 1811, Massena had to 
retire, and the Portuguese then reaped their reward in 
having their frontiers freed from the invader for the 
rest of the Peninsular War. Englishmen of modern 
times are too apt to look upon the victories of the 
Peninsular War, as the results of English valour alone. 
Wellington knew better ; he knew what he owed to 
the Portuguese troops, and recognized their services 
in his despatches ; and contemporaries always spoke 
of the victorious soldiers, as the allied, or the Anglo- 
Portuguese army. Throughout the great campaigns 
of 18 1 2, 18 13, and 1 8 14, the Portuguese troops, 
shared the labours and the glories of Wellington's 
army ; and to mention but a single exploit, the attacks 
of Pack's and Bradford's Portuguese brigades on the 
Arapiles in the battle of Salamanca roused the warm 
admiration of the English soldiers and officers though 
they were not crowned with success. During the 
winter of 1 812, while the allied army was in winter 
quarters after the retreat from Burgos, Beresford put 
the finishing touch to his work by the formation of 
independent Portuguese divisions. The cacadores or 
light infantry were however too valuable to be sepa- 
rated from the English light infantry regiments, and 
continued to form part of the famous Light Division 
until the close of the war. The Portuguese divisions 
were like the brigades divided between English and 



THE END OF THE PENINSULAR WAR. 407 

Portuguese generals, among whom the most conspic- 
uous were Sir John Hamilton, and Sir Archibald 
Campbell, the future conqueror of Burma, Carlos 
Frederic Le Cor and Agostino Luis da Fonseca. Dur- 
ing the movements which followed the victory of 
Vittoria, the Portuguese showed their courage and 
discipline, and not only Wellington, but all the 
historians of the war, draw attention to their good 
conduct alike in the field and in quarters, as com- 
pared with the licentiousness and want of discipline of 
the Spanish armies. Meanwhile, matters went on 
well at home ; the Regency, under the control of Sir 
Charles Stuart, was unable to embezzle the English 
subsidies ; he took care that the troops were well paid, 
clothed, and fed ; the Portuguese people rejoiced at 
the achievements of their soldiers against France, and 
profited by the large influx of English money into 
Portugal. When the war was over and the news of 
the abdication of Napoleon, and of the battle of 
Toulouse arrived, the returning troops were enthu- 
siastically received, and all promised brightly for the 
future. The English Government were not unmindful 
of the services rendered by the Portuguese, and when 
Wellington's generals were raised to the peerage, 
Marshal Beresford, the organizer of the Portuguese 
army, was created Lord Beresford, and Sir Charles 
Stuart, the ambassador at Lisbon, Lord Stuart de 
Rothesay. 

But these rejoicings were soon followed by bitter 
lamentations, for the English plenipotentiaries at the 
Congress of Vienna headed by Lord Castlereagh, 
basely deserted their gallant allies. The Portuguese 



40 8 THE PENINSULAR WAR. 

envoys at this famous meeting for the re-settlement of 
Europe were Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Count of 
Palmella, afterwards Duke of Palmella, Antonio de 
Saldanha da Gama, afterwards Count of Porto Santo, 
and Jeronymo Lobo da Silveira, afterwards Count 
of Oriolla. These diplomatists urged that Spain 
should be forced to restore Olivenca, which Portugal 
had been obliged to cede at the Treaty of Badajoz in 
1 80 1, a claim which was perfectly fair and just ; but 
Talleyrand opposed this act of justice, and Castlereagh 
unjustifiably abandoned the faithful ally of England, 
an act at once ungrateful and impolitic. A feeling 
that England was ungrateful was the prevailing idea 
among the Portuguese, when the news arrived from 
Rio de Janeiro that the mad Queen Maria Francisca 
had died on March 20, 18 16, and that the Prince 
Regent had been proclaimed king as John VI. 




XVIII 

MODERN PORTUGAL. 
CIVIL WARS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PAR- 
LIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT. 



The history of Portugal, after the conclusion of the 
Peninsular War, affords a melancholy example of the 
evil effects of all prolonged wars. The people, without 
great monarchs or great ministers, was divided into 
many parties, which quarrelled and fought ; numerous 
civil wars distressed the country ; commerce and agri- 
culture were neglected ; local rivalry and class jealousy 
were allowed to grow to serious proportions ; the 
government of the country and the administration of 
justite went from bad to worse ; and, as usual, misery 
and poverty followed in the train of political discon- 
tent. It is neither interesting nor instructive to study 
the details of the civil wars of the first half of the 
nineteenth century. Throughout the whole story of 
Portugal, the most prominent feature is the singular 
tenacity with which the little country maintained its 
independence and its individuality, and it is painful to 
observe that this patriotic feeling almost entirely dis- 
appeared for a time. It was during this period that 



410 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

Portugal fell to the rank of a third-rate state, for it 
now ceased to be an important factor in European 
politics, either from its wealth and its colonies, or as 
the trusted ally of England. This was largely due to 
a change in the attitude of England, where the old 
historical friendship for Portugal, which had been 
maintained since the Middle Ages and had been of 
advantage to both parties, was abandoned, to the 
lasting regret of every one who values the existence of 
sentiment and of historical continuity in politics. 
Nevertheless, in spite of its loss of importance, some 
account must be given of Portugal during this dis- 
tressing epoch ; for, if it is interesting to study the 
history of a nation in prosperity, it is also instruc- 
tive to see how it fell to its lowest depths. 

John VI. had greatly enjoyed the peace and com- 
fort of his residence in Brazil as Prince Regent, and 
he had become more attached to Brazil than to Portu- 
gal, when he was proclaimed King of Portugal, Brazil, 
and the Algarves in 1816. The people of the mother 
country resented this heartily ; they looked upon him 
as a deserter ; and feared that he would favour the 
interests of the colony unduly. They were also 
alarmed at the growing spirit of independence in 
Brazil ; they knew that the chief wealth of Portugal 
during the eighteenth century had been derived from 
its great colony, and they were well aware that any 
separation would be most prejudicial to their pros- 
perity. The affection of the new king for Brazil 
appeared in the very first year of his reign, for instead 
of insisting on the restitution of Olivenga, he preferred 
to attack the former possessions of Spain in South 



JOHN VI. REFUSES TO LEAVE BRAZIL. 411 

America, and ordered to Brazil a corps of 4,500 
veterans of the Peninsular War under the command 
of Lieutenant-General Le Cor. A pretext for war 
was found in the republican movement of Artigas ; 
the local militia could make no stand against the 
Portuguese soldiers; on the 20th of January, 18 17, 
Le Cor took Monte Video, and he soon occupied all 
the country up to the left bank of the River Plate. 
The victorious general was created Baron of Laguna, 
and continued to occupy the Banda Oriental until 
1825, when the inhabitants rose in rebellion, and after 
much warfare they founded the Republic of Uruguay, 
and became independent alike of Brazil and the 
Argentine Republic. 

John VI. gave colour to the accusation of the 
Portuguese that he intended to desert them for the 
Brazilians, and invert the position of the two nations, 
by his obstinate refusal to leave Rio de Janeiro. The 
English Cabinet persistently urged him to return to 
Europe, but he remained deaf to all remonstrances, 
and paid little or no attention to the state of affairs 
in Portugal. He met with no help, but only with 
opposition from his queen, Donna Carlotta Joaquina, 
who was always intriguing against him, and who had, 
as early as 1805, promised a liberal constitution to 
certain Portuguese radical leaders, in order to build up 
a position distinct from her husband. Nor had she 
intrigued only in Portugal, for in 1812 it was dis- 
covered that she had formed a scheme to become 
independent Queen of Brazil. All these plots were 
intended for the eventual advantage of her younger 
son, Dom Miguel, an arrogant youth, who was com- 



412 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

monly believed to be illegitimate. Nor was John VI. 
more happy in his relations with his elder son, Dom 
Pedro, who was a fanatical admirer of the system of 
parliamentary government. Dom Pedro was further 
Grand Master of the Freemasons of Brazil, and an 
open supporter of the Brazilian party, which hoped 
for a liberal constitution and complete separation 
from Portugal. This prince was a man of real 
ability, high character, and enlightened opinions, and 
his importance in the family was increased by his 
marriage, through the negotiations of Dom Pedro de 
Menezes Coutinho, Marquis of Marialva, and Prince 
Metternich, with the Archduchess Maria Josepha, 
daughter of the Emperor Francis I. of Austria, 

In Portugal, the government of the Regency had 
grown intensely unpopular, for Lord Stuart de 
Rothesay and Marshal Beresford ruled most despoti- 
cally. The people which had endured the authority of 
the English during the terrible war for existence, and 
the very soldiers who had served so gallantly under 
English officers on the field of battle, soon grew 
weary of foreign rule in time of peace, and raised the 
cry of " Portugal for the Portuguese." The ministers, 
who had reluctantly paid the large sums needed for 
the expenses of the army, even when aided by sub- 
sidies from England, now that those subsidies were 
withdrawn, insisted on great reductions, and practically 
paid nothing at all. Democratic ideas spread swiftly ; 
the people claimed a share in the government, and 
expressed aloud their hatred for the king, the Regency, 
and the English, and a spirit of discontent arose in 
every part of the kingdom. The first outbreak took 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1820. 413 

place in 18 18, when General Gomes Freire de Andrade, 
who had commanded the Portuguese Legion in the 
Russian and other campaigns in Napoleon's army, 
and who was an ardent lover of France, planned a 
" pronunciamento," but the plot was discovered and 
suppressed with stringent severity by the Regency, 
which ordered the execution of the general and of 
ten of his partisans. This rigorous punishment only 
enraged the radical party, and when Beresford went 
to Brazil in 1820 in order to get money from the 
king to pay the arrears due to the army, advantage 
was taken of his absence by the people of Oporto to 
raise the standard of revolt under the leadership of 
Colonel Antonio de Silveira, Brito da Fonsr ja, and 
other officers belonging to the garrison. The Regency 
in Lisbon, deprived of the presence of Beresford, gave 
way before a similar rising in the capital, headed by 
the Counts of Resende, Penafiel, and Sampaio, and 
the revolutionary juntas formed in the two great 
cities agreed to act in harmony. The English officers 
were driven from the country ; Beresford was not 
allowed to land when he returned from Rio de 
Janeiro ; a fresh regency was proclaimed ; and a con- 
stituent assembly was summoned to draw up a con- 
stitution for Portugal. 

This assembly, of which the majority consisted of 
men of the most democratic opinions, at once abolished 
all relics of feudalism, and, to the disgust of the ecclesi- 
astics, suppressed the Inquisition in Portugal, in spite 
of its studied moderation in recent years, on account 
of its former misdeeds. The deputies then proceeded 
to draw up a most impracticable constitution for the 



414 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

future government of the country, which showed that 
they had studied the glowing speeches of the orators 
of the French Revolution, and had not profited by the 
knowledge of their mistakes. By this constitution, 
which was known in later history as the " Constitution 
of 1822," protection of person and property was 
guaranteed ; and liberty of the press, equality before 
the law, the admissibility of all citizens to all offices, the 
abolition of privileges and the sovereignty of the nation 
were proclaimed. One freely elected chamber was to 
be summoned yearly to make laws and superintend 
the government of the country, and the king was 
granted only a suspensive veto over its measures. On 
hearing of this revolution, Prussia, Austria, and 
Russia withdrew their ambassadors from Lisbon, and 
England insisted that John VI. should at once pro- 
ceed to Portugal. The king accordingly left Rio de 
Janeiro and returned to Lisbon, where he solemnly 
swore to observe the new constitution, and to rule for 
the future as a constitutional monarch. The queen 
and Dom Miguel were not so complaisant; they re- 
fused to recognize the constitution, and were at once 
forced to leave Lisbon. On the departure of John 
VI., Brazil declared itself independent, and Dom 
Pedro, who was elected emperor, granted that country 
a liberal parliamentary constitution. The Portuguese 
troops and royal vessels made a slight attempt to pre- 
serve the royal authority in South America, but the 
latter were speedily defeated by Lord Cochrane, who 
entered the Brazilian service, and the separation of 
the great colony from its mother-country became an 
acknowledged fact 



THE REIGN OF JOHN VI.' 415 

The loss of Brazil and the conversion of the govern- 
ment of Portugal into a limited monarchy, enraged 
the nobility, and still more the clergy, who looked 
with horror on the radical reforms of the constituent 
assembly, and when the French invaded Spain in 
1823 to suppress the rebellion in that country, General 
Francisco de Silveira, Count of Amarante, raised a 
" pronunciamento " in the Tras-os-Montes against the 
Constitution of 1822. John VI. had imbibed some 
of his elder son's ideas, and was in favour of modi- 
fying the absolute character of the Portuguese 
monarchy, but he never concealed his opinion that 
the radical party had gone too far in its extreme 
reforms. He therefore took advantage of the " pro- 
nunciamento " in the north to declare the Constitution 
of 1822 abrogated, and appointed the Count of Pal- 
mella prime minister, with instructions to form a 
"junta," and to draw up a moderate and well-balanced 
parliamentary constitution on the English model: But 
the absolutist party, headed by the queen and Dom 
Miguel, who had been appointed commander-in-chief 
of the army, would not tolerate any form of constitu- 
tional monarchy ; they raised an insurrection in Lisbon 
against John VI. ; the king's greatest friend, the 
liberal-minded Marquis of Louie, was assassinated ; 
Palmella and his colleagues were imprisoned ; and the 
king himself was shut up in his palace and eventually 
fled for refuge on board an English man-of-war in the 
Tagus. The united action of the foreign ambassadors 
and ministers accredited to Portugal, led by Sir 
William A'Court, afterwards Lord Heytesbury, the 
representative of England, secured the restoration of 



416 MODERN PORTUGAL, 

the king's authority ; the insurrection was sup- 
pressed ; Dom Miguel was banished ; Palmella was 
re-appointed prime minister ; and at the close of 
1824, the king returned to Brazil to spend his last 
days in peace. On reaching Rio de Janeiro, he recog- 
nized Dom Pedro as Emperor of Brazil, and on the 6th 
of March, 1826, John VI. died in the country of his 
choice. By his will, John VI. left the regency of 
Portugal to his daughter Isabel Maria, to the dis- 
gust of Dom Miguel, who had fully expected in 
spite of his conduct that Portugal would be in some 
manner bequeathed to him, and that Dom Pedro 
would be satisfied with the government of Brazil. 

The next twenty-five years are the saddest in the 
whole history of Portugal. The establishment of the 
system of parliamentary government, which now 
exists, was a long and difficult task ; it is almost im- 
possible to follow the rapid sequence of events, and 
quite impossible to understand the varying motives of 
different statesmen and generals. The keynote of the 
whole series of disturbances is to be found in the 
pernicious influence of the army. Beresford's creation 
was a grand fighting machine, but armies, and more 
particularly generals, after a long period of active 
service, are almost, certain to become dangerous in 
times of peace. In the case of Portugal, the army 
was disproportionately large for the size and revenue 
of the country ; there was no foreign or colonial war 
to occupy its energies, and the soldiers would not 
return to the plough nor the officers retire into private 
life. 

The English Cabinet at this juncture determined to 



DOM MIGUEL ELECTED KING. 417 

maintain peace and order, and in 1826, a division of 
five thousand men was sent under the command of 
Lieutenant-General Sir William Clinton to garrison 
the chief towns. The accession of Pedro IV. to the 
throne was hailed with joy in Portugal, though looked 
on with suspicion in Brazil. He justified his reputa- 
tion by drawing Up a charter, containing the bases for 
a moderate parliamentary government of the English 
type, which he sent over to Portugal, by the English 
diplomatist, Lord Stuart de Rothesay. Then to 
please his Brazilian subjects, he abdicated the throne 
of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Donna Maria da 
Gloria, a child of seven years old, on condition that on 
attaining a suitable age she should marry her uncle, 
Dom Miguel, who was to swear to observe the new 
constitution. The Charter of 1826 was thankfully 
received by the moderate parliamentary party ; Clin- 
ton's division was withdrawn ; Palmella remained 
prime minister ; and in the following year, 1827, Dom 
Pedro destroyed the effect of his wise measures by 
appointing Dom Miguel to be regent of Portugal in 
the name of the little queen. 

Dom Miguel was an ambitious prince, who believed 
that he ought to be king of Portugal ; he was 
extremely popular with the old nobility, the clergy, 
and the army, with all who disliked liberal ideas, and 
with the beggars and the poor who were under the 
influence of the mendicant orders. He was declared 
Regent in July, 1827, and in May, 1828, he summoned 
a .Cortes of the ancient type, such as had not met 
since 1697, which under the presidency of the Bishop 
of Viseu offered him the throne of Portugal. He 



4-l8 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

accepted, and immediately exiled all the leaders of 
the parliamentary, or, as it is usually called, the 
Chartist, party, headed by Palmella, Saldanha, Villa 
Flor, and Sampaio. They naturally fled to England, 
where the young queen was stopping on her way to 
be educated at the court of Vienna, and found popular 
opinion strongly in their favour. But the Duke of 
Wellington and his Tory Cabinet refused to counten- 
ance or assist them. The duke urged on the marriage 
of the queen with her uncle, and persisted in con- 
fusing the moderate and the radical parties, and in 
believing that Palmella was a democrat. The little 
queen was herself kindly received by George IV., 
but the behaviour of the Duke of Wellington was 
so obnoxious to her guardians, Amelia of Bavaria, 
Empress of Brazil and second wife of Dom Pedro, 
and Felisberto Caldeira Brant Pontes, Marquis of 
Barbacena, that they took her to France in 1829. 
She was there granted the Chateau of Meudon for a 
residence, and was educated by her stepmother, and 
two accomplished ladies, Eugenia Telles da Gama, 
Countess of Palmella, and Leonor da Camara, Mar- 
chioness of Ponte Delgada, while civil war was raging 
in Portugal in her name. 

Meanwhile the reign of Dom Miguel had become 
a Reign of Terror ; arrests and executions were 
frequent ; thousands were deported to Africa, and in 
1830 it was estimated that forty thousand persons 
were in prison for political offences. He ruled in 
absolute contempt of all law, and at different times 
English, French, and American fleets entered the 
Tagus to demand reparation for damage done to 



INSURRECTION AGAINST DOM MIGUEL. 419 

commerce, or for the illegal arrest of foreigners. The 
result of this conduct was that the country was hope- 
lessly ruined, and the chartist and radical parties, who 
respectively advocated the Charter of 1 826 and the Con- 
stitution of 1822, agreed to sink their differences, and 
to oppose the bigoted tyrant. The island of Terceira 
in the Azores had never recognized Dom Miguel, and 
it was there in 1829 that Palmella, Villa Flor, Jose 
Antonio Guerreiro and Quevedo Pizarro declared 
themselves a council of regency for Queen Maria da 
Gloria. On the nth of August, 1830, they defeated a 
fleet sent against them by Dom Miguel in Praia Bay, 
and at this news all the chartists who could escape 
from Portugal, and the numerous Portuguese exiles in 
England and France, hastened to the Azores. Dom 
Pedro, who had devoted his life to the cause of 
parliamentary government, resigned his crown in 183 1 
to his infant son, and left Brazil to head the movement 
for his daughter's cause. He first went to London, 
where he met with a good reception from the Liberal 
Cabinet of Lord Grey, and he there negotiated a large 
loan in his daughter's name. He then hastened to 
the Azores with as many men as he could raise, 
most of whom were English soldiers, tired of peace, 
or adventurers of other nations, and on his arrival he 
appointed the Count of Villa Flor, commander-in- 
chief of the army, and Captain Sartorius, of the 
English navy, admiral of the fleet, of Queen Maria 
da Gloria. 

In July, 1832, the ex-emperor with an army of 
7,500 men arrived at Oporto, where he was enthusi- 
astically welcomed, and Dom Miguel then laid 



420 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

siege to the city. European opinion was divided 
between the two parties ; partisans of freedom and of 
constitutional government called the Miguelites "slaves 
of a tyrant," while lovers of absolutism, alluding to 
the loans raised by the ex-emperor, used to speak of 
the "stock-jobbing Pedroites." The siege was long 
and protracted ; Dom Miguel finding himself invari- 
ably repulsed in his assaults, turned it into a blockade, 
and want within the walls and cholera among the 
besiegers decimated the armies. On both sides the 
commanders quarrelled among themselves, and the 
only event worthy of mention is the defeat of the 
Miguelite fleet by Sartorius on the nth of October, 
1832. In 1833 more vigorous action marked the 
career of the Pedroites. Major- General Joao Carlos 
Saldanha de Oliveira e Daun, an old officer of Beres- 
ford, and a friend and former colleague of Palmella, 
took the command of the army in Oporto, and 
defeated the Miguelites under the Count of San 
Lourenco, on the 4th of March, and under General 
das Antas, on the 24th of March, 1833. Captain 
Charles Napier, of the English navy, succeeded 
Sartorius as admiral of the Pedroite fleet, and con- 
veyed a force of one thousand five hundred men from 
Oporto to the Algarves, under the Count of Villa Flor, 
now created Duke of Terceira, and then practically 
destroyed the Miguelite fleet offCape Saint Vincent on 
the 5th of July, 1833. The Duke of Terceira was equally 
successful on land ; he was warmly welcomed by the 
people of the Algarves and the Alemtejo ; his army 
was increased by volunteers as he advanced ; he 
utterly defeated the Miguelites under General Telles 



SURRENDER OF DOM MIGUEL. 42 1 

Jordao at Covada Piedade, and triumphantly entered 
Lisbon on the 24th of July. Dom Pedro immediately 
sailed round to the capital, and summoned his 
daughter from France, and on her arrival he again 
proclaimed the Charter of 1826. The Miguelites, 
under the French Marshal, Bourmont, then attacked 
Lisbon, but were easily beaten off. The year 1834 
was one of unbroken success for the Chartists. 
England and France recognized Maria da Gloria as 
Queen of Portugal, and the ministry of Queen 
Isabella of Spain, knowing Dom Miguel to be a 
Carlist, sent two Spanish armies under Generals Rodil 
and Serrano to the help of Dom Pedro. Saldanha 
took Leiria and defeated the disheartened Miguelites 
at Torres Novas and Almoster ; Captain Napier 
having destroyed the usurper's fleet, took to the land, 
and reduced the Beira, capturing Caminha, Vianna, 
Ponte de Lima and Valenca ; General Sa de Bandeira 
conquered the Alemtejo ; and the Duke of Terceira 
overran the Tras-os-Montes, and won a victory at 
Asseiceira. Finally the combined Spanish and Portu- 
guese armies surrounded the remnant of the Miguelites 
at Evora Monte, and on the 26th of May, 1834, Dom 
Miguel surrendered. By the Convention of Evora 
Monte, Dom Miguel abandoned his claim to the 
throne of Portugal, and in consideration of a pension 
of ;£ 1 5,000 a year promised never again to set foot in 
the kingdom. 

Dom Pedro declared the young queen of age, and 
summoned a full Cortes to meet at Lisbon. He 
appointed a strong ministry with the Duke of 
Palmella as president, and the Duke of Terceira at 



422 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

the War Office, and an attempt was made to re- 
arrange the finances and settle the kingdom. The 
Cortes declared Dom Miguel and his heirs for ever 
ineligible to succeed to the throne and forbade them 
to return to Portugal under pain of death, and struck 
a fatal blow at the influence of the Miguelites by 
abolishing all the orders of the friars, who had hither- 
to kept alive his party in the provinces. Dom Pedro, 
who had throughout the struggle been the heart and 
soul of his daughter's party, had thus the pleasure of 
seeing the country at peace, and a regular parliamen- 
tary system in operation, but he did not long survive, 
for on the 24th of September, 1834, he died at Queluz 
near Lisbon, of an illness brought on by his great 
labours and fatigues, leaving a name, which deserves 
all honour from Portuguese and Brazilians alike. 

Queen Maria da Gloria was only fifteen, when she 
thus lost the advantage of her father's wise counsel 
and steady help, yet it might have been expected 
that her reign would be calm and prosperous. But 
neither the queen, the nobility, nor the people, under- 
stood the principles of parliamentary government, and 
the army, accustomed to fight and unable to do any- 
thing else, was a constant source of danger. Members 
of different parties could not or would not believe 
that all true Portuguese alike loved Portugal ; the 
party in power proscribed and exiled its opponents, 
while the party in opposition invariably appealed to 
arms, instead of seeking to enforce its opinions by 
legitimate parliamentary means. In addition, the un- 
fortunate country was ravaged by numerous brigands, 
generally disbanded soldiers, who called themselves 



THE REIGN OF MARIA II. 423 

Miguelites, and who invariably escaped into Spain, 
when attacked in force. Each successive government 
refused to recognize or to pay interest upon the loans 
raised by its predecessor, and the financial credit of 
Portugal soon fell to a very low ebb in the money 
markets of Europe. It is unprofitable and almost 
impossible to examine here the tendencies of the chief 
statesmen of the time, for new governments quickly 
succeeded each other, and it will be sufficient to 
notice only the most important " pronunciamentos " 
and appeals to arms. The whole reign was one of 
violent party struggles, for they hardly deserve to be 
called civil wars, so little did they involve, which 
present a striking contrast to the peaceable constitu- 
tional government that at present prevails. 

In her earlier years, Queen Maria da Gloria was 
chiefly under the influence of her stepmother, Amelia 
of Bavaria, and in January, 1835, she married the 
Queen Dowager's brother, Augustus Charles Eugene 
Napoleon, Duke of Leuchtenberg, second son of 
Eugene de Beauharnais by Princess Augusta of 
Bavaria, to the great chagrin of Louis Philippe of 
France, who had proposed his son, the Duke of 
Nemours. This prince died after two months' resi- 
dence in Portugal, but it was so necessary to have 
an heir to the throne, that the queen was pressed to 
marry again at once. She complied, and in January, 
1836, she married Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha, nephew of Leopold, King of the Belgians, and 
it was his nomination to the high office of commander- 
in-chief, which brought about the first appeal to arms. 
In September, 1836, Fernando Soares da Caldeira 



424 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

headed a " pronunciamento " in Lisbon for the re- 
establishment of the Constitution of 1822, which was 
entirely successful, and resulted in the drawing up of a 
new constitution. This "pronunciamento" was followed 
by various other "pronunciamentos" and good deal of 
fighting, but eventually the new Constitution of 1838, 
which was really that of 1822 slightly modified, was 
generally adopted. It worked until 1842, when one 
of the radical ministers, Antonio Bermudo da Costa 
Cabral, suddenly declared for the Charter of 1826 at 
Oporto. The Duke of Terceira at once headed a 
"pronunciamento " in Lisbon in favour of the Charter, 
and came into office with Costa Cabral as home 
secretary, and virtual prime minister. Costa Cabral, 
who was in 1845 created Count of Thomar, made 
himself very acceptable to the queen, and by inter- 
preting the Charter in the most royalist sense, even 
attempted to check the liberty of the press. It was 
now the turn of the Septembrists to have recourse to 
arms, and after an attempt to place Saldanha in office, 
the opposition broke out into open insurrection under 
the Viscount Sa. de Bandeira, the Count of Bomfim 
and the Count das Antas. This new insurrection was 
followed by what is known as the war of Maria da 
Fonte or " Patuleia," which is even more pitiable than 
its predecessors. Foreign powers eventually inter- 
vened, and on the 29th of June, 1847, the Convention 
of Granada was signed, by which a general amnesty 
was declared, and Saldanha was maintained in power. 
In 1849 the Count of Thomar once more came into 
office, and in 185 1 he was again expelled by Saldanha 
at the head of his troops. This was the last " pro- 



PEACEFUL PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT. 425 

nunciamento" worthy of notice ; in 1852 the Charter 
was revised to suit all parties ; direct voting, one 
of the chief claims of the radicals, was allowed, and 
the era of civil war came to an end. Maria da Gloria 
did not long survive this peaceful settlement, for she 
died on the 15th of November, 1853, and her husband 
the King-Consort, Ferdinand II., assumed the regency 
until his eldest son Pedro V. should come of age. 

The era of peaceful parliamentary government, 
which succeeded the stormy reign of Maria II., has 
been one of material prosperity for Portugal ; agricul- 
ture and commerce revived, and a great literary and 
historical revival took place, marked by the names 
of Joao Baptista de Almeida-Garrett, Antonio 
Feliciano de Castilho, and Jose da Silva Mendes 
Leal, the poets, and of Alexandra Herculano de 
Carvalho e Araujo, the Viscount de Santarem, and 
Luis Augusto Rebello da Silva, the historians. Men 
were not wanting in the first half of the nineteenth 
century to advocate the formation of an Iberian 
republic or kingdom, comprising the whole of the 
peninsula, but the revival of national pride in recall- 
ing the glorious past of Portuguese history, which has 
been the work of these great poets and historians, has 
breathed afresh the spirit of patriotism into a people 
which had been wearied out by perpetual " pronuncia- 
mentos " and absurd civil wars. 

The only political event of any importance during 
the reign of Pedro V., who came of age and assumed 
the government in 1855, and who in 1857 married the 
Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern, was the affair of 
the Charles et Georges. This French ship was engaged 



426 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

in what was undoubtedly the slave trade, though 
slightly disguised, off the coast of Africa in 1858, 
when it was seized by the Portuguese authorities of 
Mozambique, and, in accordance with the laws and 
treaties against the slave trade, the captain, Roussel, 
was condemned to two years' imprisonment. The 
Emperor Napoleon III., glad to have a chance of 
posing before the French people, and counting on his 
close alliance with England to prevent the interven- 
tion of the ancient ally of Portugal, instantly sent a 
large fleet to the Tagus under Admiral Lavaud, and 
demanded compensation, which, as England gave no 
hint of assistance, Portugal was obliged to pay. The 
whole country, and especially the city of Lisbon, was 
during this reign, on account of the neglect of all 
sanitary precautions, ravaged by cholera and yellow 
fever, and it was in the midst of one of these out- 
breaks, on the nth of November, 1861, that Pedro V., 
who had refused to leave his pestilence-stricken 
capital, died of cholera, and was followed to the 
grave by two of his younger brothers, Dom Ferdinand 
and Dom John. 

At the time of Pedro's death, his next brother and 
heir, Dom Luis, was travelling on the continent, and 
his father, Ferdinand II., who long survived Queen 
Maria da Gloria, and morganatically married Elise 
Hensler, a dancer, assumed the regency until his 
return, soon after which King Luis married Maria Pia, 
younger daughter of Victor Emmanuel, king of 
Italy. The new monarch followed his brother's policy, 
and allowed his ministers to fight out their battles in 
the chambers without any interference from himself. 



THE REIGN OF LUIS I. 427 

During his reign, the old combatants of the stormy 
reign of Maria da Gloria, Palmella, Terceira, Sa de 
Bandeira, Thomar, and Saldanha, all died off, and 
with them their peculiar method of enforcing their 
political views. Their successors in the leadership of 
political parties, the Duke of Louie and the Marquis 
of Avila, Antonio Manoel Fontes Pereira de Mello 
and Antonio Jose Braamcamp, were men of greater 
administrative ability, who did not go to war when 
they were defeated in Parliament, and they therefore 
do not contribute any striking pages to the national 
history, though they have done much for the 
prosperity of the country. The last " pronunciamento," 
or rather attempt at a " pronunciamento/' of the last 
survivor of Maria da Gloria's turbulent statesmen, the 
Duke of Saldanha, in 1870, only proved how entirely 
the time for such movements had passed away. He 
conceived the idea that the Duke of Louie was too 
great a favourite at court, and so he one day came to 
the palace and after recalling to the king's mind a 
few historical examples, such as the fatal intimacy 
of Charles X. of France with the Due de Polignac, he 
threatened an appeal to arms unless the Duke of 
Louie was at once dismissed. King Luis, perceiving 
that the old man was in earnest and not wishing to 
have the peace of the country disturbed, humoured 
his fancy, and after keeping Saldanha himself in 
office for four months, despatched him as ambassador 
to London, where the old warrior died in 1876. With 
this trifling exception, the reign of King Luis was 
prosperous and peaceful, and the news of his death on 
October 9, 1889, was received with general regret. 



428 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

Luis I. was succeeded on the throne by his elder 
son, Dom Carlos, or Charles I., a young man of 
twenty-six, who married in 1886, the Princess Marie 
Amelie de Bourbon, the eldest daughter of the 
Comte de Paris. His accession was immediately 
followed by the revolution of the 15th of November, 
1889, in Brazil, by which his great uncle, Pedro II., 
Emperor of Brazil, was dethroned and a republican 
government established in that country. This news 
created a profound impression in Portugal ; the repub- 
lican party, which has for some years been growing in 
strength in the cities of Lisbon and Oporto hailed it 
with delight, and the democratic journals urged that 
the example of Brazil should be followed. The 
young king's difficulties have been further increased by 
the disputes which have arisen with regard to Africa, 
and there is no concealing the fact that Charles I. 
will have to show the greatest political wisdom, if 
he is to weather the storms now besetting the position 
of Portugal, and to save the Portuguese monarchy. 

Many allusions have been made to the possessions 
of Portugal in Africa. It has been seen that certain 
places both on the east and west coasts of Africa, 
such as Angola and Mozambique, were originally 
occupied and fortified as resting-places for the Portu- 
guese fleets on the way to and from India, and that 
when they were re-taken after the Revolution of 1640, 
they were occupied only because they had formerly 
belonged to Portugal and not because of their 
intrinsic value. Of recent years, however, the value 
of these settlements has increased owing to the open- 
ing up of Africa to commerce. This is thoroughly 



THE AFRICAN QUESTION. 429 

understood by the more intelligent of modern Portu- 
guese statesmen, and courageous Portuguese travellers, 
such as Serpa Pinto, Roberto Ivens, and Brito Capello, 
have taken their part in obtaining a more correct 
knowledge of the geography of Africa. But the 
opening up of Africa has attracted settlers and 
explorers of other nations to the " Dark Continent," 
who, if they have not denied the rights of Portugal, 
have certainly infringed them. The original Portu- 
guese settlements were merely ports at which ships 
might rest and refit ; and the points at issue 
now concern the amount of the territory adjoining 
those settlements or of the "hinterland" behind them 
towards the interior, which rightly belongs to Portugal. 
This question of boundaries is in the nature of things 
a difficult one to settle, and it is much to be regretted 
that the disputes which have arisen have chiefly been 
with England, the ancient ally of Portugal. The high 
spirit of the Portuguese people has been wounded by 
the tone of part of the English press, and their know- 
ledge of their own present weakness and of their past 
greatness has made them the more sensitive. Some 
of their agents in Africa have possibly acted in an 
arbitrary and high-handed manner, and Englishmen 
have not been slow to resent such treatment. Yet it 
is to be sincerely hoped that these differences between 
the two ancient allies may be peacefully settled, and 
it may be that some knowledge of how close the 
friendship of the two nations was for many centuries 
may make the English people feel more tolerantly 
inclined towards the claims of the Portuguese to con- 
sideration and respect. 



43° MODERN PORTUGAL. 

Within recent years the internal prosperity of 
Portugal has increased ; railways and telegraphs have 
been constructed ; sanitary improvements have been 
introduced ; and a good system of national primary 
and secondary education has been established, owing 
mainly to the efforts of the poet, Antonio Feliciano 
de. Castilho. Its financial condition, however, may 
well give rise to the deepest apprehension ; the 
amount of its national debt is nearly as heavy in pro- 
portion to its population as that of England, and the 
repudiation of loans during the reign of Maria II. has 
made it difficult to raise money in the more wealthy 
countries of Europe. Even more serious danger to the 
prosperity of Portugal is threatened by the continued 
emigration to Brazil, to which country a large number 
of the sturdy peasants flock every year, chiefly from 
the northern provinces of the Tras-os-Montes and the 
Entre-Minho-e-Douro. This continuous stream of 
emigration, though prejudicial to Portugal, has been of 
the greatest service to Brazil, and Greater Portugal, as 
the mother country and her colony in South America 
may be termed, though politically divided, is more 
prosperous than ever. 

Even more striking than the advance of material 
prosperity has been the great literary revival, which 
has marked the era of peaceful parliamentary govern- 
ment. King Luis was an enlightened patron of 
letters, and translated some of the plays of Shake- 
speare into Portuguese in a manner which showed 
him to be well versed in the capabilities of his own 
language. In the country of Camoens there has been 
no lack of poets, though none of the modern writers 



MODERN LITERATURE. 431 

would dare to class themselves with him. Foremost 
among these poets are Almeida-Garrett and Castilho, 
who alike sang the ancient glories of Portugal, but 
among their followers are many whose inspiration is 
hardly inferior to their own. Such men as Jose da 
Silva Mendes Leal, Luis Augusto Palmeirim, and Joao 
Soares de Passos, have written poems worthy to rank 
with the classics of Portuguese literature, and their 
muse has generally been fostered by a knowledge of 
ancient writers and of old national lyrical forms. Even 
more important than the poets are the historians of 
modern Portugal, for they are the men who have 
made the Portuguese so proud of their nationality 
that they still cling closely to their independence and 
oppose the advocates of " Iberianism. " The founder 
of the new school of scientific historians was Alex- 
andra Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, who, after 
imitating Sir Walter Scott in his historical novels, 
showed that he had been influenced by Niebuhr 
and Ranke in his famous history of Portugal, of which 
the first volume was published in 1848. He it was 
who first grasped the fact that history can only be 
rightly studied and correctly written after a careful and 
critical investigation of documents, and he manifested 
both energy and discernment in clearing away the 
cobweb of legend which had been spun about the 
early days of the nation. Herculano inspired his 
spirit into the new generation, and he has had many 
painstaking and able followers, among whom the 
ablest are Luis Augusto Rebello da Silva, Simiao Jose 
da Luz Soriano, and Jose Maria Latino Coelho. In 
general literature, the modern Portuguese are equally 



432 MODERN PORTUGAL. 

distinguished, though their greatest strength lies in 
poetry and history, and it is worthy of notice, that 
literary fame is a sure passport to rapid advancement 
in political life. The high opinion held of literary 
endeavour is an evidence of the persistency of the 
national spirit, and as such may be welcomed as the 
brightest augury for the future development of the 
Portuguese nation. 

Few countries of Europe will repay attentive study 
better than Portugal ; no nation, except Spain, passed 
through such a trial as the reign of Maria da Gloria, 
and in no country have the advantages of representa- 
tive institutions been better realized ; socialism 
possesses there a reforming, not a revolutionary, force ; 
knowledge of the history of their nation, inspired 
by great writers, has made the modern Portuguese 
ambitious to revive the glories of the past, and has 
united men of all shades of opinion in a common 
patriotism. The Camoens celebration of 1880 showed 
that the Brazilians are still proud of their mother 
country, and that the Portuguese race on both sides 
of the Atlantic was ready to develop new energy and 
perseverance, and to prove its descent from the men 
who under Affonso Henriques conquered the Moors ; 
who under John I. and John IV. rejected the rule of 
the Spaniards ; who under Affonso de Alboquerque 
and Joao de Castro made their names famous from 
Arabia to Japan ; and who, by the labours of Prince 
Henry " the Navigator " and the voyage of Vasco da 
Gama, initiated a new era in the history of the world. 



INDEX. 



A. 
Abd-el-Melik, 248, 250, 253, 254 
Abrantes, 57, 104, 392 
Abrantes, Marquis of, 393 
Abu Abdallah, Governor of Alca- 

cer do Sal, 72, 73 
Abu-1- Hasan, defeated at the 

Salad o, 1 340, 92 
Abyssinia, visits of Portuguese 

travellers to, 167 
"Academia Real das Sciencias," 

372, 396 
Academy of History, 353 
A'Court, Sir William ; see Heytes- 

bury, Lord 
Aden, 200, 214 
Affonso Henriques, 24, 31, 34, 35, 

37-58, 98 
Affonso II., 70-74, 98 
Affonso HI., 79, 80-83, 89, 98 
Affonso IV., 86, 91-99 
Affonso V., 130-35,138, 159, 160 
Affonso VI., 324, 326-34 
Affonso, son of Affonso III., 85, 

86 
Affonso, only son of John II., 

163, 170 
Affonso, Joao, bastard son of 

Diniz, 91 
Affonso, Pedro, bastard son of 

Count Henry, 31 
Affonso, Pedro, bastard son of 

Diniz, Count of Barcellos, 91 



Africa, 144-56, 195, 
343, 346, 428, 429 



247, 



Agriculture, 87, 181, 368 
Ahmed, Maula, 248, 249, 253-55 
Alans, the, conquer Lusitania, 10 
Alarcos, battle of, 63 
Albergaria, Diogo Soares de, 

169 
Albergaria, Francisco Soares de, 

309 
Albergaria, Lopo Soares de, 203 
Albert, Cardinal, 286, 290 
Alboquerque, Affonso de, 169, 
. 185, i93» 197-201 
Alboquerque, Francisco de, 193 
Alboquerque, Joao de, 209 
Alboquerque, Mathias de, 291 
Alboquerque, Mathias de, 317 
Alboquerque, Pedro de, 169 
Alboquerque, Sancho, Count of, 

101 
Alcacer do Sal, 54, 62, 66, 72 
Alcacer-Quibir, battle of (1578), 

254 
Alcanede granted to Knights of 

Calatrava, 66 
Alcantara, battle of (1580), 283 
Alcobaca, monastery of, 54, 69, 

98, 99, 397 
Alcobaca, Cortes of, 164, 165 
Alemquer, 53, 104 
Alemtejo, the, 55, 57, 66, 87, 

181, 421 
Alexander III., Pope, 57 
Alexander VI., Pope, 163, 191 
Alfarrobcira, battle of (1449), 133 
Alfonso VI., 17, 18, 23 



434 



INDEX. 



Alfonso VII., 30, 35, 37-39, 54 

Alfonso, VIII., 63, 71 

Alfonso IX., 63, 64, 71 

Alfonso X., 81 

Alfonso XI., 92 

Algarves, the, 43, 62, 76, 78, 80, 

81, 181, 182 
Alho, Affonso Martins, 94 
Ali, Almoravide Caliph, 28 
AliAdil Shah, King of Bijapur, 247 
Aljubarrota, battle of, ii-i, 113 
Aljustrel, taken by Knights of 

Santiago, 76 
Almada, 53, 62, 66, 104, 312 
Almada, Alvaro Vaz de, see Ar- 

ronches, Count of 
Almada, Antonio de, 308, 31 1 
Almanza, battle of (1707), 351 
Almeida taken by the Spaniards 

(1760), 363 
Almeida, Francisco de, 195-97, 

214 
Almeida, Lourenco de, 175, 196 
Almeida, Miguel de, 308, 309, 311 
Almeida-Garrett, Joao Baptista, 

425, 431 
Almohades, the, 44, 55, 57, 62 ; 

see Ya'kub, Yusuf 
Almoravides, the, 17, 41 
Almoster, battle of (1834), 421 
Aorna, Joao de Almeida Portugal, 

Marquis of, 371, 374 
Alorna, Pedro, Marquis of, 395 
Alva, Duke of, 249, 281, 283 
Alvares, Manoel, 276 
Alvares, Mattheus, 287 
Alvitiz, Pedro, 72 
" Amadis of Gaul " romance, 126 
Amarante, Francisco da Silveira, 

Count of, 415 
Ameixial, battle of (1663), 331 
Amelia of Bavaria, 418, 423 
Anadia, Viscount of, 391 
Andeiro, Joao Fernandes, see 

Ourem, Count of 
Andrade, Gomes Freire de, 395, 

413 
Andrade, Jacinto Freire de, 325 
Andrew of London, 52 
Andrew of Oxford, 93 
Angeja, Marquis of, 372 



Angola, 324, 346 

Anne of Austria, 314, 315 

Annes, Affonso, 109 

Annes, Estevao, 80 

Annes, Goncalo, 167 

Annes, Martim, 75 

Annes, Pedro, 73, 75 

Annunciacao, Miguel de, 371 

Antas, General das, 420, 424 

Antonio, Prior of Crato, 281, 

283-86 
Aranjuez, Treaty of (1793), 386 
Arcadia de Lisboa, 369, 372 
Arguin, fort at, 154, 295 
Armamar, Count of, 316 
Arnold of Aerschot, 52 
Arnold, Edmund, 1 18 
Arrayolos, Count of, 130 
Arronches, battle of (1801), 389 
Arronches, Antonio Vaz de Al- 
mada, Count of, 132, 133 
Arundel, Richard, Earl of, 93 
Arundel, Thomas, Earl of, 1 18 
Arzila, 133, 179, 249, 253, 285 
Ash worth, Sir C, 405 
Asseiceira, battle of (1834), 421 
Asturians, the, 5 
Ataulphus, Visigothic king, 11 
Athaide, Catherina de, 270 
Athaide, Luis de, Viceroy of 

India, 246-48, 257 
Atoleiros, battle of (1384), no 
Augustus, Duke of Leuchtenberg, 

423 
Ayamonte, 78, 80 
Ayamonte, Marquis of, 316, 317 
Aymeric of Cahors, 89 
Azambuja, Diogo de, 169 
Azambuja, Jeronymo de, 276 
Azamor in Morocco, 179 
Azevedo, Antonio de Araujo de, 

387, 388, 391, 396 
Azores, the, 147, 285, 295, 419 
Azurara, chronicler, 135, 379 

B 

Badajoz, 56, 326, 375, 389 
Bahadar Shah. King of Gujarat, 

204, 205 
Bainetti, Marquis de, 305 
Baldaya, Affonso Goncalves, 147 



INDEX. 



435 



Ballerais, Count of, 316 

Bank of Portugal, 368 

Bar, Count of, 62 

Barbacena, Felisberto Caldeira 

Brant Pontes, Marquis of, 405, 

418 
Barbosa du Bocage, Manoel 

Maria, 379, 385 
Barbosa Machado, Diogo, see 

Machado 
Barcellos, Joao Affonso Telles de 

Menezes, Count of, 104 
Barcellos Duke of, 255 
Bardez, Marathas defeated at, 374 
Barreto, Antonio Moniz, 320 
Barreto, Antonio Moniz, 247, 248 
Barreto, Francisco, 246, 247, 271 
Barros, Joao de, 185, 226, 274-76 
Batalha, Convent, 1 13, 1 19 
Batavia, 294, 342 
Beatrice de Gusman, 81 
Beatrice of Castile, 86, 98 
Beatrice, daughter of Pedro I., 

101 
Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand 

and Leonor, 106, 107 
Beatrice, daughter of the " Holy 

Constable," 125 
Beatrice, daughter of Emmanuel, 

178, 264 
Beauvais, Bishop of, 62 
Belatha, Emirate of, 43 
Belem, palace at, 176 ; Convent 

at, 184, 204 ; Sebastian buried 

at, 256 
Bellesta, Spanish general, 397 
Benedict XIV., Pope, 360 
Bengal, trade with, 205, 296, 343 
Beresford, William Carr, Viscount, 

400,402, 405-7, 412,413 
Bermudo II., King of Gallicia, 13 
Berwick, James, Duke of, 351 
Bishoprics and bishops, 10, 26, 

30, 67, 75, 79, 183 
Black Death, the, 95 
Blake, Admiral Robert, 323, 324 
Bojador, Cape, 146, 147 
Bombay ceded to England, 330, 

346 
Bomfim, Count of, 424 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 401 



Bonaparte, Lucien, 389 
Braamcamp, Antonio Jose, 427 
Bradford, Sir Edward, 405, 406 
Braga, Archbishopric of, 26 
Braga Cathedral, 32, 98 
Braganza, the Dukes of, 303 
Braganza, Affonso, Duke of, 125, 

126, 131-33 
Braganza, Alvaro de, 161 
Braganza, Catherine, Duchess of, 

278 
Braganza, Constantino de, 212, 

213, 246, 270 
Braganza, Ferdinand, Duke of, 

161, 162 
Braganza, Jayme de, 255 
Braganza, Joao, Duke of, 280, 284 
Braganza, Theodosio, Duke of, 304 
Brandao, Antonio, 301 
Brazil, 175, 221-35, 2 43> 296-98, 

318-20, 336, 337, 346-48, 369, 

375-77, 392, 414, 419, 428, 

430 
Breyner, Pedro de Mello, 393, 396 
Breze, Chevalier de, 315 
Brito, Bernardo de, 7, 301 
Brotero, Felix de Avellar, 380, 

385 
Bugio, castle of, 312 
Burton, Sir Richard F., quoted, 

90, 130, 242, 257 
Busaco, battle of (1810), 402 



Cabo Branco, 148 

Cabral, Goncalo Velho, 147 

Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 175, 192, 

193, 221, 222 

Cacello taken, 78, 80 

Caceres taken by Affonso Henri - 

ques, 55, 56 
Cadamosto, Luigi, 151, 152 
Cadaval, Duke of, 336, 351 
Cafim, abandoned by John III., 

179 
Calatrava, Order of, 66 
Caldeira, Francisco Soares da, 

423, 424 
Calicut, 189, 193, 198 
Calpurnius, C, 6 
Cam, or Cao, Diogo, 156 



43^ 



INDEX. 



Camara, Luis Goncalves da, 

Jesuit, 241, 242 
Camara, Martini da, 241 
Caminha, Andrade, 267 
Caminha, Duke of, 315— 1 7 
Camoens, Luis de, his life, 268-71 ; 

his " Lusiads," 271-74, 379 
Camoens, " Lusiads" of, J, 45, 

90, 97, 130, 189, 214 
Camoens Celebration, 274, 432 
Campbell, Sir Archibald, 405, 407 
Campo, Don Luiz de, 311 
Cannanore, 193, 196 
Cannon, in, 113, 169 
Cantabrians, the, 5 
Cantanhede, Antonio Luis de 

Menezes, Count of, 327 
Canton, Andrade at, 175, 215, 

342 
Cape Matapan, 352 
Cape of Good Hope, 156, 343 
Cape Saint Vincent, 420 
Cape Verde, 150 
Cape Verde Islands, 153, 346 
Caraffa, Spanish general, 392 
Cardenas, Don Didace de, 305 
Carlotta joaquina, 373, 404, 411, 

414 
Carneiro, Pedro de Alcacova, 241, 

245, 249 
Carracena, Marquis of, 331 
Carthaginians, the, 5, 6 
Carvalho, Antonio Coelho de, 314 
Carvalho, Lourenco Peres de, 

3 l6 
Carvalho e Mello, Sebastiao Jose 

de, see Pombal, Marquis of 
Castanheda, Fernao Lopes de, 

185 
Castel Melhor, Luis de Sousa e 

Vasconcellos, Count of, 331-33 
Castilho, Antonio Feliciano de, 

425, 430, 431 
Castlereagh, Lord, 407, 408 
Castro Alvaro Peres de, 95 
Castro, Antonio Jose de, 397 
Castro, Fernando de, 305, 306 
Castro, Ines de, 95-98 
Castro, Joao de, 206, 210-12 
Castro, Joaquim Machado de, 

368, 380 



Castro, Pedro Fernandes de, 93, 

95 
Catherine, daughter of King 

Edward, 1 ^4, 164 
Catherine of Austria, 178, 240 
Catherine of Braganza, 323, 329, 

330, 336, 340 
Catheiine de' Medici, 278, 285 
Cave-dwellers in Portugal, 4, 5 
Cavida, Antonio de, 334 
Celestine III., Pope, 63, 64 
Celorico, built by Sancho I. , 69 
Cerneja, battle of (1137), 38 
Ceuta, 123, 333 
.Ceylon, 184, 203, 292, 342 
Cezimbra, palace at, 119 
Chancellors of Portugal, 88 
Charles I., King of Portugal, 428 
Charles I., of England, 314 
Charles II., of England, 329, 

330 

Charles V., Emperor, 178, 179 
Charles, Archduke, 338, 340, 351 
Charles VIII., of France, 165 
Charles III., Duke of Savoy, 178 
" Charles-et-Georges," the, 425, 

426 
Chariot, General, 397 
Charter of 1826,417, 421, 424,425 
Chastenau, Comte de, 337 
Chaul, battle of (1508), 196 
Chimnaji Apa takes Bassein, 373 
China, 175, 215, 216, 342 
Chin Chee, factory at, 215 
Christ, Order of, 86, 124, 183 
Christianity introduced, 10, 12 
Chronica do Conquista do A I gar - 

ves, 127 
Chroniclers, the early, 126, 127, 

379 
Cintra, 53, 104, 119, 334, 400 
Ciudad Rodrigo, 56, 331, 341 
Clement XIV., Pope, 364 
Cleynaerts, quoted, 236 
Clinton, Col. Henry, 390 
Cochin, 193, 195, 196, 198, 204, 

294, 342 
Cochin China, 175, 214 
Coelho, Duarte, 175, 214 
Coelho da Silva, Francisco, 385 
Coelho, Jose Maria Latino, 431 



INDEX. 



437 



Coimbra, 15, 18, 24, 28, 58, 74, 

83, 87, 97, 105, in, 119, 406 
Coimbra, bishops of, see Annun- 

ciacao, Aymeric, Tiburcio 
Coimbra, University of, see Uni- 
versity 
Coligny, Admiral, 234 
Colombo, factory, 203 
Columbus, Christopher, 169 
Commerce, Treaties of, 86, 94, 

165. 337-40, 372 
Congo, the, 151 

Congreve, "V\ illiam, quoted, 216 
Constance, daughter of Diniz, 86 
Constance, wife of Pedro, 92, 95 
Constituent Assembly of 1820, 

4I3> 414 
Constitution of 1822, 414, 424 
Conti, valet of Affonso VI., 330, 

331 
Conventions, 400, 421, 424 
Correa, Antonio, 309, 316 
Correa da Silva, Antonio, 380 
Correa da Serra, Jose, 379, 385 
Correia, Paio Peres, 76 
Corte-Real, Diogo de Mendonca, 

Count of, 352 
Corte-Real, Gaspar, 175 
Corte-Real, Jeronymo, 267, 301 
Cortes, 45, 71, 81, 83, 106, in, 

128, 130, 160, 164, 165, 257, 

280, 283, 312, 417, 
Costa Cabral, Antonio Bermudo 

da, see Thomar, Count of 
Costa, Duarte da, 233 
Costa, Joao da, 262 
Courts of Love, 89, 91 
Coutinho, Francisco, see Redondo, 

Count of 
Coutinho, Gaston, 308, 311 
Coutinho, Luis Pinto de Sousa, 

386 
Coutinho, Manoel de Sousa, 291 
Coutinho, Ruy Pereira, 175 
Couto, Diogo do, 185, 301 
Covada Piedade, battle of, 421 
Covilham, Joao Peres de, 167 
Cromwell, Oliver, 323 
Crusaders, 48, 52, 60, 62, 72 
Crusadoes, struck by Affonso V., 

133 



Cruz e 

378 
Cueva, 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 
Cunha 

393 
Cunh 

104 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 
Cunha, 



Silva, Antonio Diniz da, 

Fernando de la, 313 
Ayres da, 226 
Cardinal da, 354 
Estevao da, 308, 309 
e Menezes, Francisco da, 

a, Joao Lourenco da, 101, 

Luis da, 308 
Luis da, 359 
Nuno da, 204, 205 
Rodrigo da, 308, 311 
Tristao da, 175, 196, 197 

D 

Da Cunha, Da Silva, &c, see 

Cunha, Silva, &c. 
Dabhol, sacked by Almeida, 197 
Daman, taken by Constantino de 

Braganza, 213, 270 
Das Antas, Das Regras, &c, see 

Antas, Regras, &c. 
De Castro, De Noronha, &c, see 

Castro, Noronha, &c. 
Denifle, II, " Universitiiten des 

Mittelalters," 260 
Diamonds discovered in Brazil, 

377 
Diamper (Udayampura), Synod of, 

292 
Dias, Bartholomeu, 156 
Dickson, Sir Alexander, 405 
Diniz, King of Portugal, 81, S3, 

85-91, 98, 260 
Diniz, son of Pedro I. and Ines 

de Castro, 103, 114, 118 
Diogo, Duke of Viseu, 162 
Diu, Island of, 197, 204, 205, 211, 

212, 334 
Domingues, Rodrigo, 93 
Domingues, Vasco, 104 
Drake, Sir Francis, 285, 290 
Dulce of Aragon, queen of San- 

cho L, 57, 98 
Duperron de Castera, 379 
D'Urban, Sir Benjamin, 402 
Dutch, the, 290, 291, 294-98, 

314, 3i5> 3 l8 > 320, 341-43, 

346 



438 



INDEX. 



E 

Eannes, Gil, doubles Cape Boja- 

dor, 147 
Earthquake of Lisbon, 357, 358 
Eben, Baron, 401 
Education, National system of, 430 
Edward, King of Portugal, 122, 

124, 126-29 
Edward I., of England, 86 
Edward II., of England, 85 
Edward III., of England, 93, 94, 

104 
Edward IV., of England, 134, 

164 
Edward, the Black Prince, 94 
Edward, Duke of Guimaraens, 

178, 278 
Egas, Joao, Archbishop of Braga, 

79 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 

285, 295 
Elmina, fort built at, 156 
Elvas, 75, 312, 327, 360, 389 
Emeralds found in Brazil, 377 
Emmanuel, King of Portugal, 

170-78, 188, 191, 215 
England, 52, 62, 72, 86, 93-95, 

106, in, 113, 1 16-18, 164, 

165, 290, 295, 296, 329, 330, 

336, 337-40, 343, 352, 363, 

380, 381, 387, 388, 399-405> 

414, 417, 421, 429 
Epic, first Portuguese, 93 
Equator, the, crossed, 154 
Era, changed from Augustan to 

Christian, 121 
Espinosa, Gabriel, 288 
Euric, Visigothic king, 11 
Evora, Pedro de, 167 
Evora, 10, 55, 57, 66, 128, 135, 

160, 302, 331 
Evora Monte, surrender of, 421 



Faria e Sousa, Manoel, 185, 301 
Farinha, Affonso Peres, 76 
Faro, Affonso, Count of, 161 
Ferdinand, King of Portugal, 99- 

107 
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 

423, 425, 426 



Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, 

134, 135, 163, 171 
Ferdinand VI., of Spain, 352 
Ferdinand I., of Leon, 14, 15 
Ferdinand II., of Leon, 54-56 
Ferdinand IV., of Castile, 86 
Ferdinand, son of Sancho I., 70, 74 
Ferdinand, son of Affonso II., 76, 

78, 79 
Ferdinand, son of John I., the 

" Constant Prince," 122, 125, 

129, 130 
Ferdinand, son of Edward, 153, 

161 
Ferdinand, son of Emmanuel, 

Duke of Guarda, 178 
Ferdinand, son of Maria II., 426 
Fernandes, Joao, 151 
Fernandes, Martim, 73 
Ferrario, Francisco, 276 
Ferreira, Antonio, 266, 267 
Feudalism in Portugal, 87, 88, 

120, 121, 160, 413 
" Fidelissimus," title conferred on 

kings of Portugal, 353 
Fielding, Henry, 381 
" Filintists," the, 379 
FlordaRosa, battle of (1801), 389 
Fonseca, Agostino Luis da, 405, 

407 
Fontaine, Pierre Louis, 385 
Fontainebleau, Treaty of (1807), 

392 
Forbes-Skelater, Joao, 386 
Francis Xavier, St., 209, 212, 

295 . 
Frederick III., Emperor, 134 
Freemasons, 385, 393 
Freire, Antonio de Andrade, 371 
French, the, in Brazil, 233-35 
French Revolution, 382, 383, 385, 

414 
Friars, Orders of, 74, 208, 417, 

422 
Funchal, in Madeira, 144 



Galle in Ceylon, 330 
Gallicia, 15, 25, 37-39, 56 
Gallicians, mentioned by Strabo, 



INDEX. 



439 



Galveras, Count das, 340 
Galway, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord, 

340, 341, 351 
Gama, Antonio de Saldanha da, 

see Porto Santo, Count of 
Gama, Estevao da, 205, 206 
Gama, Vasco da, 175, 188, 189, 

I9I-93* 203, 204 
Gaunt, John of, see Lancaster, 

Duke of 
Gazeta de Lisboa, 325 
Gelmires, Diogo, 28-30 
George IV. of England receives 

Maria II., 418 
Goa, 183, 198, 201, 203, 208, 209, 

246, 247, 292, 294, 317, 342, 

343, 374, 375, 390 
Godoy, Prince of the Peace, 386, 

387, 392 
Goes, Damiao de, 274 
Gold, discovery of, in Brazil, 336, 

337, 347, 348, 376 
Gomes, Diogo, 153 
Gomes, Fernan, 154 
Gomes, Sueiro, 72, 74, 78 
Gomes, Violante, 281 
Goncalves, Alvaro, 97, 98 
Goncalves, Antonio, 148, 151 
Goncalves, Lopo, 154 
Gonzales, Sebastiao, 218 
Gonzales, Sebastiao, 286, 287 
Goths, the, 10, 11 
Govea, Andrea, 261, 262 
Govea, Antonio, 261 
Govea, Martial, 261 
Graa, Ruy de, 169 
Granada, Convention of, 424 
Greek colonies in Portugal, 5 
Gregoiy IX. , Pope, 76 
Gregory XL, Pope, 101 
Gregory XIII. , Pope, 249, 278 
Guimaraens, 5, 24, 31, 133, 304 
Guinea, discovered by Diniz Dia-, 

150 
Gusmao, Bartholomeu de, 379, 380 
Guy of Boulogne, Cardinal, 103 
Guy of Vico, Cardinal, 39 
Gylfels, Dutch Admiral, 315 

H 

Hamilton, Captain, quoted, 374 



Hamilton, Sir John, 407 
Haro, Don Luiz de, 327 
Hawker, Sir Richard, 405 
Henry of Burgundy, 18, 20, 21, 

20-24, 98 
Henry, Cardinal, King of Portu- 
gal, 183, 240, 241, 257 
Henry IV., of England, 118 
Henry V., of England, 118 
Henry V1L, of England, 165 
Henry I., of Castile, 70 
Henry II., of Castile, 101, 103, 

106 
Henry III., of Castile, 113 
Henry IV., of Castile, 134 
Henry, Prince, " the Navigator," 

122, 124, 125, 131, 132, 140-53 
Hensler, Elise, 426 
Hentzel, squire of John of Gaunt, 

in 
Herculano de Carvalho e Araujo, 

Alexandre, 102, 425, 431 
Herman, M., 396 
Heytesbury,W.A'Court, Lord ,415 
Historians of Portugal, 126, 127, 

274, 275, 301, 369, 372, 379, 

425, 431, 432 
Holland, Earl of, 72 
Honorius III., Pope, 73, 75 
Hoseyn, Emir, 197 
Hospital, Knights of St. John, of 

the, 32, 66, 76, 80 
Houtman, Cornelius, 291 
Hugh of Cluny, 23, 28 
Hunter, Sir W. W., quoted, 190, 

201, 291, 294 

I 

Iberianism, 2, 415, 421 
Ilheos in Brazil, 229 
India, 143, 167, 175, 189, 190, 
192-213, 245-48, 291-96, 342, 

343, 373-7S 
Innocent II., Pope, 39, 40 
Innocent III., Pope, 67, 69, 71 
Innocent IV., Pope, 79 
Inquiracaoes-geraes. 73, 160 
Inquisition, 183, 231, 246, 291, 

294, 343, 354, 3£>7, 413 
Interdicts, 69, 7^, 78, 81 
Isabel, St., 86, 91, 92 



440 



INDEX. 



Isabel, daughter of John I., 125, 

134 
Isabel, queen of Affonso V., 132, 

134 
Isabel, daughter of Emmanuel, 

178 
Isabel Maria, daughter of John 

VI., 416 
Isabella, Queen of Castile, see 

Ferdinand and Isabella 
Isabella, eldest daughter of Fer- 
dinand and Isabella, 163, 171, 

174 

J 
Jaffnapatam, taken by Dutch, 342 
Jant, Chevalier de, 323, 329 
Jayme, son of Duke of Coimbra, 

133 
Jesuits, 183, 209, 230, 231, 343, 

347. 359-6i, 364 
Jews, Portuguese, 171, 172, 173 
Joanna, Lady of Flanders, 70 
Joanna, daughter of King Ed- 
ward, 135 
Joanna, queen of Affonso V., 134 
Joanna, daughter of Affonso V., 

165 
Joanna, daughter of Charles V., 

179, 240 
John I., King of Portugal, 97, 

103, 105-7, 109-11, 113-27, 

133, 261 
John II., King of Portugal, 156, 

158-70 
John III., King of Portugal, 174- 

84, 261, 263 
John IV., King of Portugal, 304- 

6, 312-17, 321, 323, 324 
John V., King of Portugal, 350- 

54 
John VI., King of Portugal, 373— 

89. 392, 393' 408, 410, 411, 

414-16 
John XXL, Pope, 83 
John XXII. , Pope, 86 
John L, of Castile, 106, 107, no, 

in, 113 
John, son of Pedro L, 103-5 
John, Duke of Beja, 122, 125 
Tohn, son of John III., 179, 

184 



John, son of Maria II., 426 
John of Abbeville, Cardinal, 75, 

76 
Joseph, King of Portugal, 354-70 
Joseph, bastard son of John V., 

371 
Joseph, son of Maria I. and 

Pedro III., 373 
Juliao, Chancellor, 67,71 
Junot, General, 391, 392, 393, 

395-97, 400 
Juromenha, 66, 389 
Justice, administration of, 88, 121, 

160, 367 

K 

Kandy, conquest of king of, 292 
Kersaint, French deputy, 385 
Knights, military religious Orders 
of, 32, 48, 66, 76 



Labrador discovered, 175 
La Clue, French admiral, 358 
Lafoes, Joao de Braganza, Duke 

of, 371, 372, 385 
Laharpe translates " Camoens," 

379 
Lamego, 8, 15, 45 
Lancarote, his slaving voyages, 149 
Lancaster, Henry, Earl of, 93 
Lancaster, John of Gaunt, Duke 

of, 103, 113 
Lane-Poole, S., quoted, n, 172 
Language, the Portuguese, 2, 8, 

89, 121, 265 
Law, Portuguese, 10, 88, 121, 124 
Leca granted to Knights of Hos- 
pital, 32 
Le Cor, Carlos Frederico, 392, 

405,407,411 
Leiria, 10, 43, 46, 81, 87, 106, 

183, 368, 421 
Lemos, Damiao Antonio de, 369 
Leonor Telles de Menezes, Queen, 

101, 103-5, io 7> IIQ 
Leonor, daughter of Affonso IV., 

94 
Leonor, daughter of Edward, 134 
Leonora of Aragon, 124, 130, 131 
Leonora of Castile, 101, 102 



INDEX. 



44I 



Lhuillier, member of Regency, 396 

Lima, Luis de, 255 

Limia, taken by Affonso Hen- 

riques, 37, 56 
Linhares, built by Sancho L, 69 
Lippe-Buckeburg, Count of, 363, 

364, 3 6 7 
Lisbon, 5, 8, 12, 17, 18, 51, 52, 
64, 87, 95, 102, 103, 109, no, 
119, 120, 182, 236, 237, 257, 
260, 261, 286, 290, 302,308-12, 

333, 338, 353, 355. 357, 35^, 

368, 372, 380, 381, 393, 413, 

421, 426, 427 
Literature, 89, 90, 126, 127, 135, 

137, 169, 259-77, 301, 325, 369, 

377-79, 425, 430-32 
Lobeira, Vasco de, 126 
Lodeiro, granted to Knights of 

Sepulchre, 32 
Loison, General, 397 
London, crusaders from, 62, 94 
Lopes, Fernan, chronicler, 127, 379 
Lopes, Martim, 167 
Louis XL, of France, 135, 159 
Louis XIV., of France, 329, 332 
Louie, Marquis of, 415 
Lourenco, Archbishop of Braga, 

no, 121 
Lourenco, Theresa, 97 
Luis L, King of Portugal, 426, 

427, 430 

Luis, son of Emmanuel, Duke of 
Beja, 178, 179, 211, 281 

Luisa de Guzman, Queen of John 
IV., 304, 305, 326-31 

Lusitania, not Portugal, 6-8 

Lusitanians, 5-7 

Luz Soriano, Simiao Jose da, his- 
torian, 431 

M 

Macao, 215, 270, 317, 342, 369, 

375 
Macassar, 343 

Machado, Diogo Barbosa, 369 
Machado de Castro, Joaquim, see 

Castro 
Machico, Province of Madeira, 

144 
Machin, Robert, 144-46 



Madden, Sir Samuel, 405 
Madeira, 144-46, 390, 399 
Madrid, 341 ; treaty of, 351, 352 
Mafra, 53, 353, 397 
Magalhaes, Fernao de, 175, 180, 

199, 214 
Magalhaes, Pedro Jacques de, 331 
Magellan, see Magalhaes 
Magro, Gonealo Peres, 80 
Major, R. FL, quoted, 141, 149 
Malacca, 175, 199, 214, 247, 248, 

294, 3 T 7, 342 
Malagrida, Gabriel, 361, 364 
Maldive Islands, 175, 196 
Mangalore, 246 
Manique, Diogo Ignacio de Pina, 

172, 382, 385, 390 
Manufactures, Pembal and, 368 
Marathas, the, 343, 373, 374 
Margaret of France, 244 
Margaret of Savoy, 305, 306, 309 
Maria L, Queen of Portugal, 370- 

73, 393, 4o8 
Maria II., Queen of Portugal, 417, 

418, 421-25 
Maria, daughter of Ferdinand and 

Isabella, 174 
Maria, daughter of Affonso IV., 92 
Maria, daughter of John III., 179 
Maria Amelia, queen of Carlos L, 

428 
Maria Barbara, daughter of John 

v., 352 

Maria Benedicta, 373 
Maria Francisca, marries Affonso 
VI. , 332; and Pedro II., 333, 

334 
Maria Josepha, marries Pedro IV., 

412 
Maria Pia, queen of Luis I., 426 
Maria Sophia, queen of Pedro II., 

336 

Marialva, Marquis of, 331 
Marialva, Marquis of, 412 
Marianna, queen of John V., 351 
Marianna Vittoria, queen of 

Joseph, 352, 370 
Martinho, commander of Palmella, 

72 
Martinho, Archbishop of Lisbon, 

109 



442 



INDEX. 



Martins, Lourenco, 109 
Mascarenhas, Francisco de, 291 
Mascarenhas, Joao de, 21 1 
Mascarenhas, Joao de, see 

Cadaval, Duke of 
Mascarenhas, Martinho de, 37 1 
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 175 
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 212 
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 308 
Massena, Marshal, 404-6 
Matapan, Cape, battle off, 352 
Matilda of Savoy, 41 
Matilda, daughter of Affonso 

Henriques, 54 
Matilda, daughter of Sancho I., 70 
Maurice of Nassau, 298, 318, 319 
Maurice, Bishop of Coimbra, 21, 28 
Mauritius, 175, 346 
Mayne, Colonel, 399 
Mazagon, 240 

Mazarin, Cardinal, 321, 323, 329 
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 304 
Melinda, 189, 213 
Mello, Affonso de, 312 
Mello de Menezes, Antonio, 308, 

309 
Mello e Castro, Diniz de, 34 
Mello, Francisco de, 314, 329 
Melllo, Jorge de, 308, 309, 312 
Mello, e Castro, Martinho, 367, 

368, 372, 388 
Mello, Vasco Martins de, 105 
Mencia, queen of Sancho II., 78, 80 
Mendes, Antonio, 262 
Mendes, Goncalo, "j^, 74 
Mendes, Nuno, 15 
Mendes, Paio, 30, 31 
Mendes, Sueiro, 17, 30, 31 
Mendes Leal, Jose da Silva, 425, 

431 
Mendonca, Antonio Lopes de, 180 
Mendonca, Diogo de, 297 
Mendonca, Diogo de, see Corte 

Real, Count of 
Mendon9a, Joao de, 246 
Mendon9a, Lopo Furtado de ; see 

Rio Grande, Count of 
Mendonca Furtado, Pedro de, 

308, 311 
Mendonca, Pedro Francisco de, 334 
Menezes, Alexis de, 242, 245 



Menezes, Alexis de, 292 
Menezes, Diogo de, 248 
Menezes, Duarte de, 203, 209 
Menezes, Duarte de, 255 
Menezes, Duarte de, 291 
Menezes, Emmanuel de, 297 
Menezes, Fernando de, 270 
Menezes, Garcia de, 6 
Menezes, Henrique de, 204 
Menezes, Joao de, 169 
Mertola, taken (1239), 78 
Methuen, Right Hon. John, 337 
Methuen Treaty, 337-40, 368 
Metternich, Prince, 412 
Meudon, Chateau of, 418 
Mickle, William James, 379 
Miguel, King of Portugal, 411, 

412, 414-21 
Miguel, son of Emmanuel, 174 
Miller, Colonel John, 405 
Minas, Marquis das, 340, 341 
Miranda, bishopric of, 183 
Missionaries, their work in India, 

208, 209, 292, 343 
Mohammed III. of Gujarat, 205, 

211, 212 
Mohammed En-Nasir, 71 
Mohammedans, n-13, 40-58, 60- 

63, 78, 80 
Molingen, Baron of, 317 
Moluccas, the, 175, 214, 294 
Mombassa, 189, 195, 213 
Moniz, Egas, tutor of Affonso 

Henriques, 31, 35, 36 
Moniz, Emigio, 31 
Montaigne, Michel de, quoted, 261 
Monte Mor, Joao de Braganza, 

Marquis of, 161 
Montevideo taken (1817), 411 
Montes Claros, battle of (1665), 

33 1 
Montijo, battle of (1642), 317 
Moplas, the, 190, 193 
Moradias, 180 
Morales, Juan, 146 
Morocco, 122, 123, 129, 133, 179, 

211, 248, 252-55, 346 
Mortmain, laws of, 71, 73, 88 
Moura, 76 

Moura, Christovao de, 280 
Mousinho, Manoel de Brito, 402 



INDEX. 



443 



Mowbray, Thomas, 1 1 1 
Mozambique, 189, 213, 247, 337, 

343> 428 
Munden, Captain Anthony, 346 
Municipal Institutions, 10, 12, 

22, 65, 87, 120 
Muscat taken (1554), 270 

N. 

Nanfran, Richard, 165 
Napier, Sir Charles, 420, 421 
Napoleon I., 388-92 
Napoleon III., 426 
Nascimento, Francisco Manoel de, 

379. 385 

Navas de Tolosa, battle of, 71 
Navy, the Portuguese, 88, 121, 

290, 353. 354, 3£>7 
Neiva, Gon9alo Telles, Count of, 

104 
Nestorian Christians in India, 209, 

292, 294 
Neutim, 374 
Nicholas IV., Pope, 87 
Niza, Marquis of, 386 
Noel, Pierre, 385 
Noronha, Affonso de, 212, 214 
Noronha, Antonio de, 246, 247 
Noronha, Carlos de, 308, 309 
Noronha, Diogo de, 386, ^7 
Noronha, Francisco Xavier de, 393 
Noronha, Garcia de, 205 
Noronha, Pedro de, 169 
Noronha Sebastiao de Mattos de, 

306, 309,311. 315-17 
Noronha, Theresa de, 355 
Norris, Sir John, 285 
Northberry, John, in 
Nova Castella, Joao de, 175 
Nova Zembla discovered, 167 
" Novaes Christians," 173, 182, 

228, 316, 365 
Nunes, Gomes, 38 
Nunes do Prado, Joao, 91 
Nunes, Pedro, 262, 277 
Nunes Sancho, 31 



Obidos, 104 

Odivelas, Convent of, 98 



Oeyras, Count of, see Fombal, 

Marquis of 
Olhao, Marquis of, 393 
Olivares, Count-Duke of, 298, 

299, 307, 3I3» 3i6 
Olivenca, 389, 408 
Omar, Emir, 44-46 
Opera-house at Lisbon, 370 
Oporto, 8, 12, 13, 64, 113, 133, 

338, 397. 401, 4*3, 419, 420 
Oporto, bishops of, see Castro, 

Hugh, Rodrigues, Salvadores 
Oporto Wine Company, 368 
Orense, 28, 30 
Oriolla, Jeronymo Lobo da Sil- 

veira, Count of, 408 
Ormuz, 197, 214, 296 
Osorio, Jeronymo, Bishop of 

Silves, 262 ♦ 

Ossuna, Duke of, 331 
Ourem, Joao Fernando Andeiro, 

Count of, 104-6, 109 
Ourique, battle of, 44-46 
Oxenstiern, Chancellor of Sweden, 

314 



Pacheco, Diogo Lopes de, 97, 98 
Pacheco, Duarte, 195 
Pack, Sir Denis, 405, 406 
Pacos de Penalva, granted to 

knights of Sepulchre, 32 
Paes, Gualdim, 62 
Palmeirim, General, 405 
Palmeirim, Luis Augusto, 431 
Palmella, 53, 62 
Palmella, Pedro de Sousa Hol- 

stein, Duke of, 404, 408, 415, 

417-19, 421 
Panjim, 198, 374, 375 
Paraguay, 175 

Paraiba, Captainship of, 298 
Passos, Joao Soares de, 431 
Patuleia, war of, 424 
Paulist Republic, the, 376 
Paullus, L. zEmilius, 6 
Payva, Affonso de, 167 
Pedro I., 92, 95, 98, 99 
Pedro II., 332-41 
Pedro III., 370-73 
Pedro IV.,41 1, 414,416,417,419-22 



444 



INDEX. 



Pedro V., 425, 426 

Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, 

419, 428 
Pedro IV., King of Aragon, 94 
Pedro, son of Sancho I., 70, 76, 

78, 80 
Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, 122, 

124, 126, 130-33 

Pedro Hispano elected Pope, 83 
Pekin, Andrade at, 175, 215 
Penafiel, Count of. 413 
Peninsular War, the, 399-407 
Pennamacor, Count of, 165 
Pepper trade, 193, 342 
Pereira de Mello, Antonio Manoel 

Fontes, 427 
Pereira, Christovao de Brito, 331, 

332 
Pereira, Nuno Alvares, "the Holy 

Constable," 107, 109, no, in, 

125, 126 
Peres, Abril, 75 
Peres, David, 370, 380 
Peres, Rodrigo, 38 
Peres de Trava, see Trava 
Perestrello, Bartholomeu, 144, 147 
Perignon, Marshal, 387 
Pernambuco, in Brazil, 229, 295, 

298, 320 
Persian trade, 214, 296 
Pessanha, Lancarote, 109 
Pessanha, Manoel, 88, 93, 145 
Philip II., of Spain, 179, 248, 280, 

283, 290, 298 
Philip III., of Spain, 299 
Philip IV., of Spain, 304, 313 
Philip V., of Spain, 337, 340 
Philip "the Good," 125 
Philip of Flanders, 58 
Philippa daughter of John of Gaunt, 

queen of John I., 1 13-15, 123 
Pieterzoon, L. S., 379 
Pina, Ruy de, 169, 379 
Pina Manique, Diogo Ignacio de, 

see Manique 
Pinheiro, Antonio de, 280 
Pinhel, 104 

Pinto, Fernao Mendes, 216, 217 
Pinto, Serpa, 429 
Pires, Ines, 118, 125 
Pisano, Matthew de, 6, 7, 127 



Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 

362 
Pizarro, Quevedo, 419 
Placencia, 341 
Plate. River, 175 
Po, Fernando, 154 
Poetry and poets, 89, 90, 126, 

263, 264-74, 3oi . 378, 379> 430, 

43i 
Pombal, Sebastiao Jose de Car- 

valho e Mello, Marquis of, 355, 

357, 358, 360-71 
Ponani, 196 
Ponte de Lima, 421 
Ponte de Lima, Thomas Xavier 

de Lima Brito, Marquis of, 372 
Ponte Delgada, Leonor da Ca- 

mara, Marchioness of, 418 
Porches, 80 
Porto, see Oporto 
Porto Alegre, bishopric of, 183 
Porto Carrero, Cardinal, 337 
Porto de Moz, 53 
Porto Santo, island of, 144 
Porto Santo, Antonio de Saldanha 

da Gama, Count of, 408 
Porto Seguro, 222, 229 
Portuguese Legion, the, 395 
Povoa, General da, 405 
Praia Bay, battle of (1830), 419 
Prehistoric monuments, 4, 5 
Prose, its commencement, 126, 

127 
Puebla, Marquis de la, 305, 311 



Quebedo, Vasco Mousinho de, 

301 
Quesnel, French general, 397 
Quiloa, South-east Africa, 195 
Quilon, India, 196 

R 

Ramires, Mem, 49 
Rarim, 374 
Ratton, Jacome, 385 
Raymond of Toulouse, 18, 21, 23 
Raymond Berenger of Aragon, 54 
Rebello da Silva, Luis Augusto, 
425, 431 



INDEX. 



445 



Recife, island of, 298, 320 

Red Sea, the, 200, 204, 205, 270 

Redondo, Francisco Coutinho, 

Count of, 184, 246, 270 
Regency of 1807, the, 393, 400, 

401, 404, 407, 412, 413 
Regency of 1808, 396 
Regras, Joao das, 109, in, 121 
Republican party, 428 
Resende, Andrea de, 7, 262, 277 
Resende, Count of, 413 
Resende, Sebastiao de, 256 
Reunion, island of, 175 
Ribeiro, Bernardim, 263, 264, 

276 
Ribeiro, Joao Pinto, 305, 306, 

308, 309, 325 
Ribeiros, Bernardim, 405 
Richard II., of England, 106, 113, 

118 
Richard III., of England, 165 
Richard of Saham, 93, 94 
Richelieu, Cardinal, 302, 314, 

315 
Rio de Janeiro, 351 
Rio d'Ouro, 147 
Rio Grande, 298 
Rio Grande, Count of, 352 
Rodil, General, 421 
Rodrigues, Martinho, 69, 76 
Rolica, battle of (1808), 399 
Romans, the, 6-8, 10 
Romances, 126 
Rooke, Admiral Sir George, 337, 

340 
Rosslyn, General Earl of, 391 
Roussel, Captain, 426 
Rubies in Brazil, 377 
Rupert, Prince, 323 



Sa. e Mello, Ayres de, 372 

Sa, Emmanuel de, 234 

Sa, Emmanuel de, 308 

Sa de Menezes, Francisco de, 301, 

,325 
Sa de Miranda, Francisco de, 264- 

66 
Sa, Garcia de, 212 
Sa, Pantaleone de, 323 
Sa, Rodrigo de, 308, 309, 323 



Sa e Benevides, Salvador Correa 

de, 324, 343, 346 
Sa de Bandeira, Viscount, 421, 

424 
Saccavem, 104 
Sadashivgarh, 374 
Sagre, Prince Henry at, 125, 140, 

141 
St. Antonio, Castle of, 312 
St. Benedict of Aviz, Order of, 

66, 80, 103, 125, 170, 183 
St. Caetano, Ignacio de, 372 
St. George, Citadel of, 311, 395 
St. Helena, 175, 346 
St. Ildefonso, Treaty of (1796), 

387 
St. Julian, Castle of, 313 
St. Lourenco, Joao Amberto de 

Noronha, Count of, 371 
St. Lourenco, Count of, 420 
St. Mamede, battle of, 31 
St. Michael in the Azores, 147 
St. Paio de Gouvea, 32 
St. Paul in Brazil, 376 
St. Pe, Chevalier de, 302 
St. Salvador, 230, 297, 298 
St. Thome, 343 

St. Vincent, Cape, battle off, 420 
St. Vincent, Earl of, 391 
Salado, The, battle of, 93 
Saldanha, Antonio de, 193 
Saldanha, Antonio de, 308, 311 
Saldanha, Cardinal de, 60 
Saldanha, Joao Carlos de Sal- 
danha de Oliveira e Daun, Duke 
of, 418, 420, 421, 424, 427 
Salic law, the, rejected, 106 
Salvaterra, Sj, 107 
Sampaio, Lopo Vaz de, Governor- 
General of India, 204 
Sampaio, Count of, 396, 413, 418 
San Caetano, San Lourenco, &c, 

see St. Caetano, &c. 
Sancha, daughter of Sancho I., 

74 
Sanches, Affonso, 91, 92 
Sancho I., 56-58, 60-70 
Sancho II., 74-80 
Sandwich, Earl of, 330, 333 
Santarem, 17, 18, 49, 57, 58, 60, 

62, $7, 393 



446 



INDEX. 



Santarem, Joao de, 1 54 
Santarem, Viscount of, 215, 425 
Santiago, Knights of, 76, 87, 125, 

170, 183 
Sarria, Marquis of, 363 
Sartorius, Admiral Sir George 

Robert, 419, 420 
Savage, Thomas, 165 
Scabra, Jose de, 396 
Schomberg, Frederick, Count, 327, 

331 
Sebastian, King, 184, 238, 240-45, 

249, 251-56 
Sebastianistas, the, 256, 257 
Sebastians, the false, 286-90 
Seia, Castle of, 37 
Senegal, River, 150 
Sepulchre, Knights of the, 32, 

66 
Sequeira, Diogo Lopes de, 175, 

199, 203 
Sequeira, Domingos Antonio de, 

3 8 0< 
Sequeira, Luis de, 292 
Serpa, 76, 299 

Serra, Jose Correa da, 379, 385 
Serrao, Francisco, 175, 199, 214 
Serrano, General, 421 
Sesnando, Count of Coimbra, 15, 17 
Seyr, 18, 24 

Shah Jehan, takes Hugh", 296 
Ship-building, 143, 144, 169 
Siam, 175, 214 
Sieges, 24, 28, 29, 37, 49, 52, 54, 

56, 58, 60, 62, 72, 75, 103, no, 

123, 129, 205, 211, 247, 320, 
.326, 373, 374.419, 420, 421 
Silkworms, 368 
Silva, Antonio Correa da, 380 
Silva, Antonio Telles da, 319, 320 
Silva, Diogo da, 183 
Silva, Estevao Soares da, 73, 75 
Silva, Francisco Coelho da, 385 
Silva, Luca de Scabra da, 391 
Silva, Luis Augusto Rebelio da, 

425, 431 
Silveira, Antonio de, 205 
Silveira, Antonio de, 401, 405, 

413 

Silveira, Francisco de, see Amar- 
ante, Count of 



Silveira, Jeronymo Lobd de, see 
Oriolla, Count of 

Silves, 62 

Simcoe, Gen. J. G., 391 

Simon of Dover, 52 

Skelater, Gen. Joao Forbes, 386 

Slavery, 182, 243, 365 

Slave-trade, the African, 148-50, 
228, 347, 375 

Smith, Sir Sidney, 392 

Soares, Garcia, 31 

Sodre, Vicente, 193 

Solano, Spanish general, 392 

Soriano, Simiao Jose da Luz, 431 

Soult, Marshal, 401 

Soure, 32, 351 

Sousa, Diogo de, 252, 257 

Sousa Coutinho, Domingos An- 
tonio de, 400 

Sousa Holstein, Frederico de, 371 

Sousa, Gonealo de, 311 

Sousa Coutinho, Luis Pinto de, 
386 

Sousa, Manoel de, 214 

Sousa, Martim Affonso de, 205, 
206, 209 

Sousa Holstein, Pedro de, see 
Palmella, Duke of 

Sousa Coutinho, Rodrigo de, 388 
Sousa, Thomas de, 229-33 
Sousa, Vasco Martins de, 99 
Southwell, Sir Richard, 333 
Spanish Succession, war of the 340, 

341, 35i 
Spencer, Gen. Sir Brent, 399 
Spice Islands, 199, 294, 295 
Spice trade, 214, 294, 295, 342 
Stephanie of Hohenzollern, 425 
Stephens, Thomas, 294 
Strabo, 5 

Stratton, Robert, 94 
Strozzi, Philip, 285 ' 
Stuart, Major-General Hon. Sir 

Charles, 387, 388 
Stuart de Rothesay, Lord, 404, 

407, 412, 417 
Stukeley, Sir Thomas, 252, 255 
Suez, Estevao da Gama at, 206 
Sugar, cultivation of, 145, 228, 

3i8,.347, 375 
Sumatra, 175, 199, 294 



INDEX. 



447 



Surat, 295 

Synod of Diamper, 292 



Talavera, battle of (1809), 401 

Talikot, battle of (1565), 246 

Tamaraca in Brazil, 229, 298 

Tangier, 129, 133, 245, 253, 330 

Taranco, Spanish general, 392 

Tavira, 76, 80 

Tavora, Christovao de, 256 

Tavora, Marquis of, 361, 362, 374 

Taxation, right of, 83 

Telles de Menezes, Goncalo, 104 

Telles de Menezes, Joao Affonso, 

104 
Telles de Menezes, Leonor, see 

Leonor 
Telles de Menezes, Maria, 104, 105 
Tello, Sebastiao de, 316 
Templars, Knights, 32, 43, 57, 

62, 66, 72, 86 
Terceira, battle of (1582), 285 
Terceira, Count of Villa Flor, 

Duke of, 418-22, 424 
Teshfln, last AlmoravideCaliph,44 
Texeira, Miguel de, 297 
Theodosio, son of John IV., 312, 

324 

Theotonio, St., 49, 58 

Theresa, daughter of Alfonso VI., 

Countess of Portugal, 18, 22-32, 

98 
Theresa, daughter of Affonso Hen- 

riques, 58 
Theresa, daughter of Sancho L, 

63,64 
Thierry of Alsace, 54 
Thomar, 43, 44, 62, 184, 283 
Thomar, Antonio Bermudo da 

Costa Cabral, Count of, 424 
Thomas, St., bones of, 208, 209 
Thomieres, General, 397 
Tieve, Diogo de, 262, 266 
Tobacco in Brazil, 347, 375 
Topazes in Brazil, 377 
Tordesillas, Treaty of (1494), 163 
Toro, battle of (1476), 135 
Torre del Tombo, 135, 186 
Torres Novas, 53, 130, 421 
Torres Vedras, 104, 405 



Tower and Sword, Order of, 135, 

Trancoso, battle of (1385), 111 
Trant, Colonel Sir Nicholas, 405, 

406 
Trava, Bermudo Peres de, 29, 

37 
Trava, Fernando Peres de, 28, 29, 

3i, 37, 38 
Travot, General, 397 
Treaties, 29, 39, 40, 55, 107, 1 13, 

163, 333, 337-40, 351, 352, 386, 

387, 389, 392 
Treaties of Commerce, 86, 94, 165 
Tristao, Nuno, reached Cabo 

Branco, 148 ; killed, 150 
Troubadours, influence of the, on 

Portuguese poetry, 89, 91 
Truxillo, taken by Affonso Hen- 

riques, 55 
Tullio, Marco, 288-90 
Tunis, expedition to, 179, 2IX 
Tuy, 28-30, 38, 56 
Tyrawley, Lord, 257, 352 

U 

Udayampura (Diamper), 292 

Universityat Lisbon, 89, at Coimbra, 
260-62, 268, 278, 355, 367, 376 

Urban IV., Pope, 81 

Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI., 
18, 23, 29, 30 

Urraca, daughter of Affonso Hen- 
ri ques, 54 

Urraca, queen of Affonso II., 70, 

74 
Uruguay, Republic of, 41 1 



Valdevez, tourney and truce of, 39 

Valenca, 421 

Valencia de Alcantara, battle of 

(1762), 363 
Valignano, Alexandre de, 292 
Valverde, battle of (1385), 113 
Vasconcellos de Brito, Miguel, 

306, 309 
Vasconcellos, Rodrigues de, in 
Vasconians, the, 5 
Vasques, Fernan, 102 
Vaublanc, Viennot de, 396 



44 8 



INDEX. 



Vaz, Tristao, 144 

Vela, Rodrigo, 38 

Vertot, Abbe, 45, 308 

Vespucci, Amerigo, 175, 222 

Vianna, 368, 421 

Vicente, Dean of Lisbon, 74-76 

Vicente, Gil, 262, 263 

Victor, Marshal, 401 

Vidigueira, Count of, see Gama, 

Vasco da 
Vieira, Antonio, 325 
Vieira, Joao Fernandes, 320 
Vienna, Congress of, 407, 408 
Villa Flor, Count of, 331 
Villa Flor, Count of, see Terceira, 

Duke of 
Villa Real, Marquis of, 315- 

17 

Villa Velha battle of (1762), 363 
Villa Verde, Count of, 391 
Villa Vicosa, 104, 305, 306, 312, 

332 
Villegagnon, Nicolas Durant, 

Sieur de, 234 
Villiers, Right Hon. J. C, 400 
Vimeiro, battle of (1808), 400 
Vinetus, Elias, 262 
Viniculture, 87, 145, 368 
Viriathus, Lusitanian hero, 6 
Viseu, 8, 15 
Visigothic rule, 10, 11 



W 

Waldeck, Prince of, 387, 388 
Waldemar, King of Denmark, 70 
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 

Duke of, 399-402, 405-407, 

418 
Willikens, Dutch admiral, 297 
Wilson, Colonel John, 405 
Wilson, Colonel Sir Robert T., 

399, 401 
Windsor, Treaty of (1386), 1 1 3, 

118, 128, 131, 164 
Witchcraft, 69 

Y 
Ya'kub, Almohade Caliph, 60, 62, 

63 
Yokohama, factory at, 217 
York, Edmund, Duke of, 106 
York, Edward, Duke of, 106, 107 
Yusuf, Almohade Caliph, $7, 5$ 
Yusuf Adil Shah, King of Bija- 

pur, 198 
Yusuf Ibn Teshfin, 17 

Z 

Zalaca, battle of (1086), 17 
Zamora, Affonso Henriques, 35, 

39, 40 
Zamorin of Calicut, the, 190, I95> 

196 
Zarco, Joao Goncalves, 144 



Ube Storip of tbe IRations, 



MESSRS. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS take pleasure in 
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" GERMANY. S. Baring-Gould. 

" NORWAY. Hjalmar H. Boyesen. 

44 " " SPAIN. Rev. E. E. and Susan Hale. 

" HUNGARY. Prof. A. VAmbery. 

44 CARTHAGE. Prof. Alfred J. Church. 

" " " THE SARACENS. Arthur Gilman. 

44 " " THE MOORS IN SPAIN. Stanley Lane-Poole. 

" " THE NORMANS. Sarah Orne Jewett. 

" PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin. 

" " " ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. Geo. Rawlinson. 

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44 ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 

44 THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley. 

44 44 44 IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless. 

44 44 " TURKEY. Stanley Lane-Poole. 

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44 MEDIAEVAL FRANCE. Prof. Gustav Masson. 

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44 44 4I MEXICO. Susan Hale. 

44 44 " PHCENICIA. Prof. Geo. Rawlinson. 

• 4 44 " THE HANSA TOWNS. Helen Zimmern. 

44 4< " EARLY BRITAIN. Prof. Alfred J. Church. 

44 44 44 THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. Stanley Lane-Poole. 

44 " RUSSIA. W. R. Morfill. 

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44 " 44 SCOTLAND. John Mackintosh. 

44 SWITZERLAND. R. Stead and Mrs. Arnold Hug. 

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author of " The Wreck of the Grosvenor," etc. (Ready April 15, 1890.) 
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Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 
Alexander the Great, and the Extension of Greek Rule and of 

Greek Ideas. By Prof. Benjamin I. Wheeler, Cornell University. 
Theoderic the Goth, the Barbarian Champion of Civilization. By 

Thomas Hodgkin, author of " Italy and Her Invaders," etc. 
Charlemagne, the Reorganizer of Europe. By Prof. George L. Burr, 

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By Ruth Putnam. 
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Davidson, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 
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Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Adventurers of England. 

By A. L. Smith, M.A., Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. 
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Charles the Bold, and the Attempt to Found a Middle Kingdom. 

By R. Lodge, M.A., Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. 
John Calvin, the Hero of .he French Protestants. By Owen M. 

Edwards, Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. 
Oliver Cromwell, and the Rule of the Puritans in England. 

By Charles Firth, Balliol College, Oxford. 
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PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

THE SCRIPTURES, 

HEBREW AND CHRISTIAN. 

ARRANGED AND EDITED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE 
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